Quotes from Kenneth Patchen

I'd carry the mail for you, Ethel, Stop running around with that pup, He's got a car, sure, and jack to throw Like water but what does he want? What do they all want? something easy, Something that somebody else worked for. Ethel, lay off rich kids, you'll end dirty.

What is the function of man? Surely the sheep can get along without him; horses run better wild; rifles make nothing; of what good are banks when ninety-nine percent of us have no money?—I have said: what are we on earth for? WE SERVE NO PURPOSE IN NATURE. It is my guess that we are slated for extinction.

The angel lay in the little thicket. It had no need of love. There was nothing anywhere in the world could startle it. We can lie here with the angel if we like. It couldn't have hurt much when they slit its throat.

Come now my child If we were planning to harm you, do you think we'd be lurking here beside the path in the darkest part of the forest?

Ambition is the weakness of all the great spirits who in acceptance will find the joy & the despair the seek. The physician can only cure when he is willing to assume your disease. To be shunned is to be God a little...

But if your precious illusion should turn out not to be real, where then will you leap, my little flea?

Literature is what you write when you think you should be saying something. Writing begins when you'd rather be doing anything else: and you've just done it.

I have told the story of the great plague-summer; as an artist I could have wished that there had been more structure and design to it – as a man, that there had been less of the kind there was.

The best hope is that one of these days the ground will get disgusted enough just to walk away - leaving people with nothing more to stand ON than what they have so bloody well stood FOR up to now.

Then I felt her hand .... ** ....while I tried to get away ..... ;'Please, Mrs. Pippin!' .... She took her ... **** ... panting and saying .......... as she ........ under the bed where I thought I'd be safe for a little while, but she reached under and ... ** ..... Just then someone opened the door and I said, 'Help!Help!' as loud as I could but he only smiled and said, 'Well that's one I'll have to try sometime,' as Mrs. Pippin ....

Out of slavery, freedom --yes, & roses from the pig's behind.

If the truth is inside, And the form is outside, What is the truth of sleep?

To live, fellowbub, is essential but to overlive is to court the devil's wife, & in loving that she you will be lain in such sparkling cold labyrinths

Dogs with broken legs are shot; men with broken souls write through the night.

Art is not to throw light but to be light.