Quotes from John Berryman

I cry. Evil dissolves, and love, like foam; that love. Prattle of children powers me home, my heart claps like the swan's under a frenzy of who love me and who shine.

Soon part of me will explore the deep and dark Floor of the harbour . . I am everywhere, I suffer and move, my mind and my heart move With all that move me, under the water

Listen, for poets are feigned to lie, and I For you a liar am a thousand times . . . .

However things hurt, men hurt worse.

Hunger was constitutional with him, women, cigarettes, liquor, need need need until he went to pieces. The pieces sat up & wrote. They did not heed their piecedom but kept very quietly on among the chaos.

They say we have weak wills. Do you know about the two drunks who went to the film of The Lost Weekend. Came out staggering. My God I'll never take another drink, said the first. My God I'll never go to another movie. How's that for commitment?

The splendour & the lose grew all the same, Sire.

The high ones die, die. They die. You look up and who's there?

A mind so dark it made one wonder if the Renaissance had ever really taken place.

We must travel in the direction of our fear.

Bats have no bankers and they do not drink and cannot be arrested and pay no tax and, in general, bats have it made.