Let me be, was all I wanted. Be what I am, no matter how I am.
Develop an interest in life as you see it; the people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
The aim of life is to live, and to live means to be aware, joyously, drunkenly, serenely, divinely aware.
Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.
I had a microscopic eye for the blemish, for the grain of ugliness which to me constituted the sole beauty of the object.
Ik kwam er achter dat ik er mijn hele leven heus niet naar had verlang om te leven – als wat anderen doen tenminste leven genoemd kan worden – maar wel om mezelf te kunnen uitdrukken.
Life’s wildest moment—she kneels on the sidewalk. Everything else she does is lies, lies.
Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything godlike about God, it is that. He dared to imagine everything
No man is great enough or wise enough for any of us to surrender our destiny to. The only way in which anyone can lead us is to restore to us the belief in our own guidance.
Surely every one realizes, at some point along the way, that he is capable of living a far better life than the one he has chosen.
Through endless night the earth whirls toward a creation unknown…
Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: It comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.
One can be absolutely truthful and sincere even though admittedly the most outrageous liar.
Every man with a bellyful of the classics is an enemy to the human race
He is trying to recapture his innocence, yet all he succeeds in doing (by writing) is to inoculate the world with a virus of his disillusionment.
Serenity is when you get above all this, when it doesn’t matter what they think, say or want, but when you do as you are, and see God and Devil as one.
He saw that science had become as great a hoax as religion, that nationalism was a farce, patriotism a fraud, education a form of leprosy, and that morals were for cannibals
It is with the soul that we grasp the essence of another human being, not with the mind, nor even with the heart.
A book lying idle on a shelf is wasted ammunition.
The kangaroo has a double penis – one for week days and one for holidays.
Living with a whore–even the best whore in the world–isn’t a bed of roses.
Whoever uses the spirit that isin him creatively is an artist. Tomake living itself an art, that isthe goal.
Art consists in going the full length. If you start with the drums you have to end with dynamite, or TNT.
We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate.
They never opened the door which leads to the soul.
The world is not to be put in order. The world is order. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
The only thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give is enough love.
To have her here in bed with me, breathing on me, her hair in my mouth—I count that something of a miracle.
What holds the world together, as I have learned from bitter experience, is sexual intercourse.
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant
I am fucking you, Tania, so that you’ll stay fucked.
literature coming from the cold corpse of a whore is the last thing to be served in bed.
To be silent the whole day long, see no newspaper, hear no radio, listen to no gossip, be thoroughly and completely lazy, thoroughly and completely indifferent to the fate of the world is the finest medicine a man can give himself.
It was a crushing defeat, but it put iron in my backbone and sulphur in my blood. I knew at least what it was to fail. I knew what it was to attempt something big.
Everyman has his own destiny: The only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.
There is the happiness which comes from creative effort. The joy of dreaming, creating, building, whether in painting a picture, writing an epic, singing a song, composing a symphony, devising new invention, creating a vast industry.
Up on the Brooklyn Bridge a man is standing in agony, waiting to jump, or waiting to write a poem, or waiting for the blood to leave his vessels because if he advances another foot the pain of his love will kill him.
No man ever puts down what he intended to say… words… are but crude hieroglyphs chiseled in pain and sorrow to commemorate an event which is untransmissible.
Every time you come to the limit of what is demanded of you, you are faced with the same problem-to be yourself!
One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things.
We create our fate every day . . . most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
Even if it doesn’t work, there is something healthy and invigorating about direct action
One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking things.
If we are always arriving and departing, it is alsotrue that we are eternally anchored. One’s destinationis never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.
When shit becomes valuable, the poor will be born without assholes.
The world around me is dissolving leaving here and there spots of time. The world is a cancer eating itself away.
I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse.
A beautiful nap this afternoon that put velvet between my vertebrae.
It is almost banal to say so yet it needs to be stressed continually: all is creation, all is change, all is flux, all is metamorphosis.
I saw the errors I had made and assumed full responsibility for everything.
I see myself forever and ever as the ridiculous [person], the lonely soul, the wanderer, the restless frustrated artist, the [person] in love with love, always in search of the absolute, always seeking the unattainable.
He read as much as his curiosity demanded – which is to say all
When a situation gets so bad that no solution seems possible there is left only murder and suicide, or both. These failing, one becomes a buffoon.
That we cannot rise equal to situations when we are in them — that is the tragedy of life.
For in Mexico, ladies and gentlemen, it’s always high noon and what glows is fuchsia and what’s dead is dead and no feather-dusters.
If you can’t give the is-ness of a thing give the not-ness of it! The main thing is to hook up, get the wheels turning, sound off. When your brakes jam, try going in reverse. If often works.
Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.
Every day that we fail to live out the maximum of our potentialities we kill the Shakespeare, Dante, Homer, Christ which is in us.
We have no need for genius – genius is dead. We have need for strong hands, for spirits who are willing to give up the ghost and put on flesh…
For the moment I can think of nothing— except that I am a sentient being stabbed by the miracle of these waters that reflect a forgotten world.
either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.
The most difficult thing to adjust to, apparently, is peace and contentment.
My one thought is to get out of New York, to experience something genuinely American.
The world is not to be put in order the world is order incarnate. It is for us to put ourselves in unison with this order.
What distinguishes the majority of men from the few is their ability to act accordingly to their beliefs.
There is something healthy and invigorating about direct action.
The study of crime begins with the knowledge of oneself.
The only artists for whom I would make way are – children. For me the paintings of children belong side by side with the works of the masters.
Destiny is what you are supposed to do in life. Fate is what kicks you in the ass to make you do it.
One of the reasons why so few of us ever act instead of react is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
The ordinary man is involved in action the hero acts. An immense difference.
One of the reasons why so few of us ever act instead of react is because we are continually stifling our deepest impulses.
Life as it is called is for most of us one long postponement.
The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.
The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.
The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough of is love.
We create our fate every day … most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
The only peace the only security is in fulfillment.
If there is to be any peace it will come through being not having.
We create our fate every day … most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
Every man has his own destiny the only imperative is to follow it to accept it no matter where it leads him.
The man who looks for security even in the mind is like a man who would chop off his limbs in order to have artificial ones which will give him no pain or trouble.
The only peace the only security is in fulfillment.
We create our fate every day … most of the ills we suffer from are directly traceable to our own behavior.
Sex is one of the nine reasons for reincarnation. The other eight are unimportant.
I struggled in the beginning. I said I was going to write the truth so help me God. And I thought I was. I found I couldn’t. Nobody can write the absolute truth.
No matter how vast, how total, the failure of man here on earth, the work of man will be resumed elsewhere. War leaders talk of resuming operations on this front and that, but man’s front embraces the whole universe.
The one thing we can never get enough of is love. And the one thing we never give enough is love.
Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such.
True strength lies in submission which permits one to dedicate his life, through devotion, to something beyond himself.
Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music – the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
In this age, which believes that there is a short cut to everything, the greatest lesson to be learned is that the most difficult way is, in the long run, the easiest.
In expanding the field of knowledge we but increase the horizon of ignorance.
All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience.
The real leader has no need to lead – he is content to point the way.
Back of every creation, supporting it like an arch, is faith. Enthusiasm is nothing: it comes and goes. But if one believes, then miracles occur.
Imagination is the voice of daring. If there is anything Godlike about God it is that. He dared to imagine everything.
Los Angeles gives one the feeling of the future more strongly than any city I know of. A bad future, too, like something out of Fritz Lang’s feeble imagination.
The waking mind is the least serviceable in the arts.
I have no money, no resources, no hopes. I am the happiest man alive.
Our own physical body possesses a wisdom which we who inhabit the body lack. We give it orders which make no sense.
If there is to be any peace it will come through being, not having.
An artist is always alone – if he is an artist. No, what the artist needs is loneliness.
The legal system is often a mystery, and we, its priests, preside over rituals baffling to everyday citizens.
Every man has his own destiny: the only imperative is to follow it, to accept it, no matter where it leads him.