I used to think we were going to win in the ’60s. Nixon went out and I thought we won.
But if they don’t exist, how can a man see them?
The reverberation often exceeds through silence the sound that sets it off; the reaction occasionally outdoes by way of repose the event that stimulated it; and the past not uncommonly takes a while to happen, and some long time to figure out.
The raw materials of reality without the glue of time are materials adrift and reality is as meaningless as the balsa parts of a model airplane scattered to the wind.
I sometimes have these spells of compulsive truth. But as Lady Macbeth would say, “The fit is momentary.”
I’ve enjoyed being a famous writer-except that every once in a while you have to write something.
If grass were legalized, it would help our drug problem enormously.
When you’re around the whole Dead scene, they’re there as a tribal thing; they’re there as part of a rendezvous and a pow-wow.
Allen Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior as time goes by. He’s a warrior first and a poet second.
There are going to be times when we can’t wait for somebody. Now, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. If you’re on the bus, and you get left behind, then you’ll find it again. If you’re off the bus in the first place – then it won’t make a damn.
Anti-drug fanatics and cops are the criminals – it’s like McCarthyism. They need someone to dislike to distract the public from the really important problems.
There’ve been a lot more people hurt on astro-turf than grass.
Look... Reality is greater than the sum of its parts, also a damn sight holier. And the lives of such stuff as dreams are made of may be rounded with a sleep but they are not tied neatly with a red bow. Truth doesn’t run on time like a commuter train, though time may run on truth. And the Scenes Gone By and the Scenes to Come flow blending together in the sea-green deep while Now spreads in circles on the surface. So don’t sweat it. For focus simply move a few inches back or forward. And once more... look.
The same old rain, and, if not welcomed, at least accepted – an old gray aunt who came to visit every winter and stayed till spring. You learn to live with her. You learn to reconcile yourself to the little inconveniences and not get annoyed. You remember she is seldom angry or vicious and nothing to get in a stew about, and if she is a bore and stays overlong you can train yourself not to notice her, or at least not to stew about her. Which.
A Man Is Known By The Mice He Keeps.
He who- what was it?- walks out of step, hears another drum.
The sun was prying up the clouds and lighting the brick front of the hospital rose red. A thin breeze worked at sawing what leaves were left from the oak trees, stacking them neatly agains the wire cyclone fence. There were little brown birds occasionally on the fence: when a puff of leaves would hit the fence the birds would fly off with the wind. It looked at first like the leaves were hitting the fence and turning into birds and flying away.
I forget sometimes what laughter can do.
If somebody’d of come in and took a look, men watching a blank TV, a fifty-year old woman hollering and squealing at the back of their heads about discipline and order and recriminations, they’d of thought the whole bunch was crazy as loons.
Nobody complains about all the fog. I know why, now: as bad as it is, you can slip back in it and feel safe. That’s what McMurphy can’t understand, us wanting to be safe. He keeps trying to drag us out of the fog, out in the open where we’d be easy to get at.