Great Throughts Treasury

"Back in the cabin I light the fire and sit sighing and there are leaves skittering on the tin roof, it's August in Big Sur --- I fall asleep in the chair and when I wake up I'm facing the thick little tangled woods outside the door and I suddenly remember them from long ago."

"Aw I don't wanta go to no such thing, I just wanta drink in alleys."

"Bartender, had turned on the radio. from a news server was talking about a circus fire and he heard that it was said: They died and hippos in tanks boiled. The characteristics of these details suave radio announcer, was telling the enthusiastic style."

"Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind."

"Be in love with your life, every detail of it."

"Beautiful girls just primp but beautiful boys do suffer."

"Beautiful insane in the rain."

"Because a new love affair always gives hope, the irrational mortal loneliness is always crowned, that thing I saw (that horror of a snake emptiness) when I took the deep iodine death-breath on the Big Sur beach is now justified and hosannah'd and raised up like a sacred urn to Heaven in the mere fact of the taking off of clothes and clashing wits and bodies in the inexpressibly nervously sad delight of love- don't let no old fogies tell you otherwise, and on top of that nobody in the world even ever dares to write the true story of love it's awful, we're stuck with a 50% incomplete literature and drama- lying mouth to mouth, kiss to kiss in the pillow dark, loin to loin in unbelievable surrendering sweetness so distant from all our mental fearful abstractions it makes you wonder why men have termed God anti-sexual somehow- the secret underground truth of mad desire hiding under fenders under buried junkyards throughout the world, never mentioned in newspapers, written about haltingly and like corn by authors and painted tongue in cheek by artists, agh, just listen to Tristan und Isolde by Wagner and think of him in a Bavarian field with his beloved naked beauty under fall leaves."

"Be in love with your life. Every minute of it."

"Because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes Awww!"

"Because in the end, you won?t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain."

"Because he was always tremendously generated towards complete relationship with his women to the point where they ended up in one convoluted octopus mess of souls and tears and fellatio and hotel room schemes and rubbing in and out of cars and doors and great crises in the middle of the night."

"Because now I am grown so old and neutral."

"Bee, why are you staring at me? I am not a flower??"

"Becoming acquainted and swallowing fears and settling down to life in the little cabin with its warm glow of woodstove and kerosene lamp and let the ghosts fly their asses off"

"Behind us lay the whole of America and everything Dean and I had previously known about life, and life on the road. We had finally found the magic land at the end of the road and we never dreamed the extent of the magic."

"Believe in the holy contour of life."

"Bein Crazy is the least of my worries."

"Believe that the world is an ethereal flower, and ye live."

"Besides which, she would never understand me because I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."

"Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society and giving their tired bookish or political or psychoanalytical reasons, but Dean just raced in society, eager for bread and love."

"Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree."

"Bitterness, recriminations, advice, morality, sadness?everything was behind him, and ahead of him was the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being (195)."

"Both of us had a lot to say, but there was no room to say it in, we were so tense and close."

"Better to sleep on an uncomfortable bed free, than comfortable - not free."

"But anybody who's never had delirium tremens even in their early stages may not understand that it's not so much a physical pain but a mental anguish indescribable to those ignorant people who dont drink and accuse drinkers of irresponsibility."

"Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk ? real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious."

"Books, shmooks, this sickness has got me wishing if I can ever get out of this I'll gladly become a millworker and shut my big mouth."

"Buddham Saranam Gocchami, I take refuge in the Buddha, Sangham, I take refuge in the church, Dhammam, I take refuge in the Dharma, the truth."

"But let a perpetual smile of peace and satisfaction on your lips be a symbol of the decision to think happiness (equanimity) since everything that happens, happens in your head."

"But I remember seeing a mess of leaves suddenly go skittering in the wind and into the creek, then floating rapidly down the creek towards the sea, making me feel a nameless horror even then of 'Oh my God, we're all being swept away to sea no matter what we know or say or do"

"But O Sarina come with me to my bed of woes, let me love you gently in the night, long time, we got all night, till dawn, till Juliet's rising sun and Romeo's vial sink, till I have slaked my thirst of Samsara at your portal rosy petal lips and left saviour juice in your rosy flesh garden to melt and dry and ululate another baby for the void, come sweet Sarina in my naughty arms, be dirty in my clean milk, and I'll detest the defecate I leave in your milky empowered cyst-and-vulva chamber, your cloacan clara file-hool through which slowly drool the hall-gyzm, to castles in your hassel flesh and I'll protect you trembling thighs against my heart and kiss your lips and cheeks and Lair and love you everywhere and that'll be that..."

"But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious."

"But the mountains were mighty solemn, and so was Japhy, and for that matter so was I, and in fact laugher is solemn."

"But then they danced down the streets like crazed tops, and I hesitated after them as I've been doing all my life as I follow people who interest me, because the only people that interest me are crazy, the people who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, wanting all at the same time, people who never yawn or talk platitudes, but burn, burn like fabulous yellow rockets exploding like spiders among the stars and then you see a light blow blue and everyone lets out?"

"But on top of all that, the feelings about Princess, I'd also gone through an entire year of celibacy based on my feeling that lust was the direct cause of birth which was the direct cause of suffering and death and I had really no lie come to a point where I regarded lust as offensive and even cruel. Pretty girls make graves, was my saying, whenever I'd had to turn my head around involuntarily to stare at the in?comparable pretties of Indian Mexico."

"But there's no joy at all, people say Oh well he's drunk and happy let him sleep it off--The poor drunkard is crying--He's crying for his mother and father and great brother and great friend, he's crying for help."

"But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes Awww!"

"But why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?"

"But there was a wisdom in it all, as you'll see if you take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of on wheels. You'll see what I mean, when it begins to appear like everybody in the world is soon going to be thinking the same way and the Zen Lunatics have long joined dust, laughter on their dust lips."

"But you can go on thinking and imagining forever further and stop at no decisions to pick up a bag for the thinkings. Turn your thinking into your work, your thoughts a book, in sieges."

"But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won't be at peace unless they can latch to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that too worries them no end."

"But, outside of being a sweet little girl, she was awfully dumb and capable of doing horrible things."

"Can't you just see all those enlightened monkey men sitting around a roaring woodfire around their Buddha saying nothing and knowing everything?"

"Clich‚s are truisms and all truisms are true."

"Can I make you happier with powder on my chest? Do you need a thousand movie shows? Sixteen million people to ride the bus with, hit the stop?I shoulda never let you go away from home? Rich lips brooded in my deaf ear. The fog?ll fall all over you, Jacky, you?ll wait in fields?You?ll let me die?you won?t come save me?I won?t even know where your grave is?remember what you were like, where your house, what your life?you?ll die without knowing what happened to my face?my love?my youth?You?ll burn yourself out like a moth jumping in a locomotive boiler looking for light?Jacky?and you?ll be dead?and lose yourself from yourself?and forget?and sink?and me too?and what is all this then?"

"By the time I went to bed I wasn't taken in by no Princess or no desire for no Princess and nobody's disapproval and I felt glad and slept well."

"Cody is furiously explaining to his little son Tim 'Never let the right hand know what your left hand is doing'."

"Clich‚s axioms, and all axioms real. If you have carpet you have a lot. Never to anything that happened - not even this.!. All day wear the hat were not on my head. Human bones are just lines wasted in vain, the whole universe a blank template for the stars. Girls beautiful make the graves."

"Colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstasy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization."