Richard Brautigan > Quotes

“Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords.”
― Richard Brautigan

“all of us have a place in history. mine is clouds.”
― Richard Brautigan

“I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Karma Repair Kit Items 1-4.

1.Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2.Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3.Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

4.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Finding is losing something else.
I think about, perhaps even mourn,
what I lost to find this”
― Richard Brautigan, Loading Mercury With a Pitchfork

“Money is sad shit”
― Richard Brautigan, The Edna Webster Collection of Undiscovered Writing

“Love Poem
ـــــــــ
It's so nice
to wake up in the morning
all alone
and not have to tell somebody
you love them
when you don't love them
any more.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Im haunted a little this evening by feelings that have no vocabulary and events that should be explained in dimensions of lint rather than words.

Ive been examining half-scraps of my childhood. They are pieces of distant life that have no form or meaning. They are things that just happened like lint.”
― Richard Brautigan

“In Watermelon Sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar.”
― Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

“I'm in a constant process of thinking about things. ”
― Richard Brautigan

“I will be very careful the next time I fall in love, she told herself. Also, she had made a promise to herself that she intended on keeping. She was never going to go out with another writer: no matter how charming, sensitive, inventive or fun they could be. They weren't worth it in the long run. They were emotionally too expensive and the upkeep was complicated. They were like having a vacuum cleaner around the house that broke all the time and only Einstein could fix it.
She wanted her next lover to be a broom. ”
― Richard Brautigan

“My God, ma'am, you're so pretty I'd walk ten miles barefooted on a freezing morning to stand in your shit.”
― Richard Brautigan, The Abortion

“I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea”
― Richard Brautigan, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

“I'll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.”
― Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

“Excuse me, I said. I thought you were a trout stream.
I'm not, she said.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

“تو هم به من فکر می‌کنی
آن‌قدر
که من به تو؟”
― Richard Brautigan

“Probably the closest things to perfection are the huge absolutely empty holes that astronomers have recently discovered in space. If there's nothing there, how can anything go wrong?”
― Richard Brautigan

“the sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
i've never had it done so gently before.
you have put a circle of castles
around my penis and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America / The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar

“The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside you.”
― Richard Brautigan, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

“Hinged to forgetfulness
like a door,
she slowly closed out of
sight,
and she was the woman I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.”
― Richard Brautigan

“I had a good-talking candle last night in my bedroom. I was very tired but I wanted somebody to be with me, so I lit a candle and listened to its comfortable voice of light until I was asleep.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Boo, Forever

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I'm haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.”
― Richard Brautigan, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

“If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago:
Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.
That is my name.”
― Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

“He created his own Kool Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by it.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

“Your Catfish Friend

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, “It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,”
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, “I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them.”
― Richard Brautigan, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

“The bookstore was a parking lot for used graveyards. Thousands of graveyards were parked in rows like cars. Most of the books were out of print, and no one wanted to read them any more and the people who had read the books had died or forgotten about them, but through the organic process of music the books had become virgins again.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

“For the rest of my life I'll be thinking about that hamburger. I'll be sitting there at the counter, holding it in my hands with tears streaming down my cheeks. The waitress will be looking away because she doesn't like to see kids crying when they are eating hamburgers...”
― Richard Brautigan

“Gee, You're so Beautiful That It's Starting to Rain

Oh, Marcia,
I want your long blonde beauty
to be taught in high school,
so kids will learn that God
lives like music in the skin
and sounds like a sunshine harpsicord.
I want high school report cards
to look like this:

Playing with Gentle Glass Things
A

Computer Magic
A

Writing Letters to Those You Love
A

Finding out about Fish
A

Marcia's Long Blonde Beauty
A+!
”
― Richard Brautigan, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

“If you get hung up on everybody else's hang-ups, then the whole world's going to be nothing more than one huge gallows.”
― Richard Brautigan

“I thought about it for awhile, hiding it from the rest of my mind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking about it too hard”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America

“I had become so quiet and so small in the grass by the pond that I was barely noticeable, hardly there. I sat there watching their living room shining out of the dark beside the pond. It looked like a fairy-tale functioning happily in the post-World War II gothic of America before television crippled the imagination and turned people indoors and away from living out their own fantasies with dignity. Anyway, I just kept getting smaller and smaller beside the pond, more and more unnoticed in the darkening summer grass until I disappeared into the 32 years that have passed since then.”
― Richard Brautigan, So the Wind Won't Blow It All Away

“because you always have a clock strapped to your body, it's natural that i should think of you as the correct time: with your long blonde hair at 8:03, and your pulse-lightning breasts at 11:17, and your rose-meow smile at 5:30, i know i'm right.”
― Richard Brautigan

“We looked like a parade barely moving toward YOU MIGHT GET LOST.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Elizabeth's voice had a door in it. When you opened that door you found another door, and that door opened yet another door. All the doors were nice and led out of her.”
― Richard Brautigan

“I feel as if I am an ad
for the sale of a haunted house:

18 rooms
$37,000
I’m yours
ghosts and all.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Her sunny side was always up.”
― Richard Brautigan, Sombrero Fallout

“My Name

“I guess you are kind of curious as to who I am, but I am one of those who do not have a regular name. My name depends on you. Just call me whatever is in your mind.
If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago: Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was raining very hard.
That is my name.
Or somebody wanted you to do something. You did it. Then they told you what you did was wrong—“Sorry for the mistake,”—and you had to do something else.
That is my name.
Perhaps it was a game you played when you were a child or something that came idly into your mind when you were old and sitting in a chair near the window.
That is my name.
Or you walked someplace. There were flowers all around.
That is my name.
Perhaps you stared into a river. There as something near you who loved you. They were about to touch you. You could feel this before it happened. Then it happened.
That is my name.”
― Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

“The Beautiful Poem"

I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking
about you.

Pissing a few moments ago
I looked down at my penis
affectionately.

Knowing it has been inside
you twice today makes me
feel beautiful.”
― Richard Brautigan, The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

“If you will die for me,
I will die for you
and our graves will be like two lovers washing
their clothes together
in a laundromat
If you will bring the soap
I will bring the bleach.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Once upon a valley
There came down
From some goldenblue mountains
A handsome young prince
Who was riding a dawncolored horse
Names Lordsburg.

I love you
You’re my breathing castle
Gentle so gentle
We’ll live forever

In the valley
There was a beautiful maiden
Whom the prince drifted into love with
Like a New Mexico made from apple thunder and long
glass beds.

I love you
You’re my breathing castle
Gentle so gentle
We’ll live forever

The prince enchanted
The maiden
And they rode off
On the dawncolored horse
Named Lordsburg
Toward the goldenblue mountains.

I love you
You’re my breathing castle
Gentle so gentle
We’ll live forever

They would have lived
happily ever after
if the horse hadn’t had
a flat tire
In front of a dragon’s
House.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Like some kind of strange vacuum cleaner I tried to console him. I recited the same old litanies that you say to people when you try to help their broken hearts, but words can't help at all.

It's just the sound of another human voice that makes the only difference. There's nothing you're ever going to say that's going to make anybody happy when they're feeling shitty about losing somebody that they love.”
― Richard Brautigan, Revenge of the Lawn: Stories 1962-1970

“I feel horrible. She doesn't
love me and I wander around
the house like a sewing machine
that's just finished sewing
a turd to a garbage can lid.”
― Richard Brautigan, Trout Fishing in America / The Pill versus the Springhill Mine Disaster / In Watermelon Sugar

“The old woman had an old dog, but he hardly counted any more. He was so old that he looked like a stuffed dog. Once I took him for a walk down to the store. It was just like taking a stuffed dog for a walk. I tied him up to a stuffed fire hydrant and he pissed on it, but it was only stuffed piss.”
― Richard Brautigan

“Night was coming on in, borrowing the light. It had started out borrowing just a few cents worth of the light, but now it was borrowing thousands of dollars worth of the light every second. The light would soon be gone, the bank closed, the tellers unemployed, the bank president a suicide.”
― Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General From Big Sur

“This morning I saw a coyote walking through the sagebrush right at the very edge of the ocean ― next stop China. The coyote was acting like he was in New Mexico or Wyoming, except that there were whales passing below. That’s what this country does for you. Come down to Big Sur and let your soul have some room to get outside its marrow.”
― Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General From Big Sur

“Je reste des heures entières debout au même endroit, presque sans bouger (j’ai même vu le vent s’arrêter dans ma main)”
― Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

“خورشید مثل یک سکه پنجاه سنتی خیلی بزرگ بود که یک نفر نفت روش ریخته و کبریت کشیده و روشنش کرده و گفته "بیا اینو نگه دار تا من برم یه روزنامه بگیرم بیام"و سکه را کف دستم گذاشته و دیگر
برنگشته بود
(از کتاب صید قزل آلا در آمریکا)”
― Richard Brautigan

“We could see the children's toys here and there, and we saw a game that the children had made themselves out of dirt, deer antlers and abalone shells, but the game was so strange that only children could tell what it was. Perhaps it wasn't a game at all, only the grave of a game.”
― Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General from Big Sur/Dreaming of Babylon/The Hawkline Monster

“We walked back to iDEATH, holding hands. Hands are very nice things, especially after they have travelled back from making love.”
― Richard Brautigan, In Watermelon Sugar

“The bees in my stomach are dead and getting used to it.”
― Richard Brautigan, A Confederate General From Big Sur