The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive.

Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.

America I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That’s what poetry does.

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

Ultimately Warhol’s private moral reference was to the supreme kitsch of the Catholic church.

The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It’s that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

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.

I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator.

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

America, I’ve given you all and now I’m nothing.

America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.

Fortunately art is a community effort – a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.

I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs – when I was 17 – that I realized I was talking through an empty skull… I wasn’t thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.

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