Quotes from Lawrence Ferlinghetti

If you're too open-minded; your brains will fall out.

I think if there's a great depression there might be some hope.

Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.

Anyone who saw Nagasaki would suddenly realize that they'd been kept in the dark by the United States government as to what atomic bombs can do.

Constantly risking absurdityand deathwhenever he performsabove the headsof his audiencethe poet like an acrobatclimbs on rimeto a high wire of his own making

We have to raise the consciousness the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace.

Decide if a poem is a question or a declaration, a meditation or an outcry.

Souls dance undressed/ together/ and like loiterers/ on the fringes of a fair/ we ogle the unobtainable/ imagined mystery/ Yet away around on the far side/ like a stage door of a circus tent/ is a wide vent in the battlements/ where even elephants/ waltz thru

The locust continues to devour the world Hunger persists Love lurches on listing to starboard like a ship in a bottle Human longing goes on Loneliness a curse Innocence persists Ignorance persists

I too have drunk and seen the spider

You and me could really exist

I have dreamt that all my teeth fell out but my tongue lived to tell the tale

I flew too near the sun and my wax wings fell off

I am going where turtles win I am going where conmen puke and die Down the sad esplanades of the official world.

I wish to descend in the social scale. High society is low society. I am a social climber climbing downward And the descent is difficult. (- Junkman's Obbligato)

I am waiting for my case to come up and I am waiting for a rebirth of wonder and I am waiting for someone to really discover America and wail

Don't Let That Horse . . ." from A Coney Island of the Mind. Don't let that horse eat that violin cried Chagall's mother But he kept right on painting And became famous And kept on painting The Horse With Violin In Mouth And when he finally finished it he jumped up upon the horse and rode away waving the violin And then with a low bow gave it to the first naked nude he ran across And there were no strings attached

her eyes downcast all the while/ and singing to herself

telling over to myself/ how beauty never dies/ but lies apart/ among the aborigines/ of art/ and far above the battlefields/ of love

I see a similarity between dogs and me. Dogs are the true observers walking up and down the world thru the Molloy country.

is where I first/ fell in love/ with unreality

watching the world walk by in its curious shoes

and I am waiting/ for Alice in Wonderland/ to retransmit to me/ her total dream of innocence

The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don't mind happiness not always being so very much fun if you don't mind a touch of hell now and then just when everything is fine because even in heaven they don't sing all the time