Allen Ginsberg Quotes

The real America that Whitman proclaimed and Thoreau decoded.

You can own an elephant or a bank or power thereof but if there's no personal breast bliss all you own is a lot of dead atoms and ideas.

Allen Ginsberg

..Moloch who entered my soul early. Moloch in whom I am a consciousness without a body. Moloch who frightened me out of my natural ecstasy. Moloch whom I abandon. Wake up in Moloch.. Light streaming out of the sky.Moloch! Moloch! Robot apartments! Invisible suburbs! Skeleton treasuries! Blind capitals! Demonic industries! Spectral nations! Invincible madhouses! Granite cocks! Monstrous bombs!They broke their backs lifting Moloch to Heaven.. Pavements, trees, radios, tons. Lifting the city to Heaven which exists and is everywhere about us.

Allen Ginsberg

Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.

Allen Ginsberg

I would rather go mad, gone down the dark road to Mexico, heroin dripping in my veins, eyes and ears full of marijuana, eating the god Peyote on the floor of a mudhut on the border or laying in a hotel room over the body of some suffering man or woman; rather jar my body down the road, crying by a diner in the Western sun; rather crawl on my naked belly over the tincans of Cincinnati; rather drag a rotten railroad tie to a Golgotha in the Rockies; rather, crowned with thorns in Galveston, nailed hand and foot in Los Angeles, raised up to die in Denver, pierced in the side in Chicago, perished and tombed in New Orleans and resurrected in 1958 somewhere on Garret Mountain, come down roaring in a blaze of hot cars and garbage, streetcorner Evangel in front of City I-Tall, surrounded by statues of agonized lions, with a mouthful of shit, and the hair rising on my scalp, screaming and dancing in praise of Eternity annihilating the sidewalk, annihilating reality, screaming and dancing against the orchestra in the destructible ballroom of the world, blood streaming from my belly and shoulders flooding the city with its hideous ecstasy, rolling over the pavements and highways by the bayoux and forests and derricks leaving my flesh and my bones hanging on the trees.

Allen Ginsberg

Poets are Damned... but See with the Eyes of Angels.

Allen Ginsberg

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that word I reach for my feather boa!

Allen Ginsberg

It occurs to me that I am America.I am talking to myself again.

Allen Ginsberg

America when will you be angelic? When will you take off your clothes?

Allen Ginsberg

America this is quite serious

Allen Ginsberg

I’m obsessed by Time Magazine.I read it every week.Always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody’s seriousbut me.

Allen Ginsberg

in my dreams you walk dripping from a sea journey on the highway across America in tears to the door of my cottage in the Western night

Allen Ginsberg

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

Allen Ginsberg

Everybody's serious but me.

Allen Ginsberg

I have no other possessions of value but my soul.

Allen Ginsberg

Every American wants MORE MORE of the world and why not, you only live once. But the mistake made in America is persons accumulate more more dead matter, machinery, possessions & rugs & fact information at the expense of what really counts as more: feeling, good feeling, sex feeling, tenderness feeling, mutual feeling. You own twice as much rug if you're twice as aware of the rug.

Allen Ginsberg

No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love- be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love -cannot be bitter, cannot deny,cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy

Allen Ginsberg

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction the weight, the weight we carry is love. Who can deny? In dreams it touches the body, in thought constructs a miracle, in imagination anguishes till born in human-- looks out of the heart burning with purity-- for the burden of life is love, but we carry the weight wearily, and so must rest in the arms of love at last, must rest in the arms of love. No rest without love, no sleep without dreams of love-- be mad or chill obsessed with angels or machines, the final wish is love --cannot be bitter, cannot deny, cannot withhold if denied: the weight is too heavy --must give for no return as thought is given in solitude in all the excellence of its excess. The warm bodies shine together in the darkness, the hand moves to the center of the flesh, the skin trembles in happiness and the soul comes joyful to the eye-- yes, yes, that's what I wanted, I always wanted, I always wanted, to return to the body where I was born.

Allen Ginsberg

America, the plum blossoms are falling.

Allen Ginsberg

So he said, 'What would you like to do? What is your desire really?' I said, 'Doctor, I don't think you're going to find this very healthy and clear, but I really would like to stop working forever–never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I’m doing now–and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends.

Allen Ginsberg

and he imagines carsand rides them in his dreams,so lonely growing up amongthe imaginary automobilesand dead souls of Tarrytownto createout of his own imaginationthe beauty of his wildforebears - a mythology he cannot inherit.

Allen Ginsberg

I learned a world from each / one whom I loved

Allen Ginsberg

Man is no form no mighty molecule no justidea alone — all that Thing — I feel man tender radiance at Heart betweenbreast and belly, that physical placewhere the Self urges — delicate sensation

Allen Ginsberg

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

Allen Ginsberg

Just because I like to suck cock doesn't make me any less American than Jesse Helms.

Allen Ginsberg

Who dreamt and made incarnate gaps in Time & Spacethrough images juxtaposed, and trapped the archangel of the soul between 2 visual images and joined the elemental verbs and set the noun and dash of consciousness together jumping with sensation of Pater Omnipotens Aeterna Deus to recreate the syntax and measure of poor human prose and stand before you speechless and intelligent and shaking with shame

Allen Ginsberg

We are great writers on the same dreadful typewriter

Allen Ginsberg

The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and handand asshole holy!Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere isholy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's anangel!

Allen Ginsberg

one must verge on the unknown, write toward the truth hitherto unrecognizable of one’s own sincerity, including the avoidable beauty of doom, shame, and embarrassment, that very area of personal self-recognition,(detailed individual is universal remember) which formal conventions, internalized, keep us from discovering in ourselves and others

Allen Ginsberg

Another lover hits the universe. The circle is broken. But with death comes rebirth. And like all lovers and sad people, I am a poet.

Allen Ginsberg

I never dreamed the sea so deep,The earth so dark; so long my sleep,I have become another child.I wake to see the world go wild.

Allen Ginsberg

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!

Allen Ginsberg

If I had a soul I sold itfor pretty wordsIf I had a body I usedit up spurting my essenceAllen Ginsberg warns youdont follow my pathto extinction

Allen Ginsberg

Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy! Holy!The world is holy! The soul is holy! The skin is holy!The nose is holy! The tongue and cock and handand asshole holy!Everything is holy! everybody's holy! everywhere isholy! everyday is in eternity! Everyman's anangel!The bum's as holy as the seraphim! the madman isholy as you my soul are holy!The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice isholy the hearers are holy the ecstasy is holy!Holy Peter holy Allen holy Solomon holy Lucien holyKerouac holy Huncke holy Burroughs holy Cas-sady holy the unknown buggered and sufferingbeggars holy the hideous human angels!Holy my mother in the insane asylum! Holy the cocksof the grandfathers of Kansas!Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bopapocalypse! Holy the jazzbands marijuanahipsters peace & junk & drums!Holy the solitudes of skyscrapers and pavements! Holythe cafeterias filled with the millions! Holy themysterious rivers of tears under the streets!Holy the lone juggernaut! Holy the vast lamb of themiddle class! Holy the crazy shepherds of rebell-ion! Who digs Los Angeles IS Los Angeles!Holy New York Holy San Francisco Holy Peoria &Seattle Holy Paris Holy Tangiers Holy MoscowHoly Istanbul!Holy time in eternity holy eternity in time holy theclocks in space holy the fourth dimension holythe fifth International holy the Angel in Moloch!Holy the sea holy the desert holy the railroad holy thelocomotive holy the visions holy the hallucina-tions holy the miracles holy the eyeball holy theabyss!Holy forgiveness! mercy! charity! faith! Holy! Ours!bodies! suffering! magnanimity!Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligentkindness of the soul!

Allen Ginsberg

who journeyed to Denver, who died in Denver, who came back to Denver & waited in vain, who watched over Denver & brooded and loned in Denver and finally went away to find out the Time, & now Denver is lonesome for her heroes,

Allen Ginsberg

Poets are damned… but see with the eyes of angels.

Allen Ginsberg

Thank God I am not God! Thank God I am not God!

Allen Ginsberg

I know I'm not God, are you? Don't be silly.God? God? Everybody's God? Don't be silly.

Allen Ginsberg

I really believe, or want to believe, really I am nuts, otherwise I'll never be sane.

Allen Ginsberg

We're all golden sunflowers inside.

Allen Ginsberg