Quotes from Gregory Corso

If you believe you're a poet, then you're saved.

I learned life were no dream I learned truth deceived Man is not God Life is a century Death an instant

Spirit is Life It flows thru the death of me endlessly like a river unafraid of becoming the sea

It is a great feeling to know that from a window I can go to books to cans of beer to past loves. And from these gather enough dream to sneak out a back door.

Ah, if I were dictator I'd have poets throwing bombs!

but if a girl were possible as I am possible then marriage would be possible...

was it man's love to screw the sky with monuments span the bay with orange and silver bridges shuttling structure into structure incorruptible in this endless tie each age impassions be it in stone or steel either in echo or halfheard ruin

Dante's step into Hell will never be forgotten by Hell.

Poets don't finish poems, they abandon them.

If you have a choice of two things and can't decide, take both.

Power is not to be dropped from a plane

Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus For a rattle bag of broken Bach records Tack Della Francesca all over its crib Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon

Should I get married? Should I be good?

FOR MILES Your sound is faultless pure & round holy almost profound Your sound is your sound true & from within a confession soulful & lovely Poet whose sound is played lost or recorded but heard can you recall that 54 night at the Open Door when you & bird wailed five in the morning some wondrous yet unimaginable score?

Il y avait des femmes, elles étaient là, je les connaissais, leurs familles les poussaient dans des institutions, elles on reçu des chocs électriques. Dans les années 50 si tu étais un homme tu pouvais être un rebelle, mais si tu étais une femme ta famille te bloquait. Il y eut certaines exceptions, je les connaissais, un jour quelqu'un écrira sur elles.

Henry Hudson Screamed on the Half-Moon : "Police are a necessary evil !" I dreamed a cop, an old cop, a whitehaired cop bowed sad on a sofa knowing in his years he carried a gun a gun to stop the breath of a breathing being a gun to cause man to push up daisies forever - and when that realization mowed him down on the sofa - he wept to know man

The other guy I dug a lot was Burroughs because he was a smart man already; he learned it through the druggie pool - the street scene of an old aristocratic kind of man.