Great Throughts Treasury

"Get up and take a shower, you bastard. - What? I do not give me what happens ? A? Smoked marijuana last night, but was not good, anyway, I said, and went to the bathroom."

"Go moan for man. It's the pathos of people that gets us down, all the lovers in this dream."

"Geniuses can be scintillating and geniuses can be somber, but it?s that inescapable sorrowful depth that shines through?originality."

"God bless child even when he get old."

"God exists without qualms. As we roll along this way, I am positive beyond doubt that everything will be taken care of for us - that even you, as you drive, fearful of the wheel - the thing will go along of itself and you won't go off the road and I can sleep."

"God is an Indian giver who gives only occasionally."

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."

"Gus was looking at him for confirmation of all his sorrows."

"God was gone; it was the silence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere. I didn't know what was happening to me, and I suddenly realized it was only the tea that we were smoking; Dean had bought some in New York. It made me think that everything was about to arrive - the moment when you know all and everything is decided forever."

"Great laughter rang from all sides. I wondered what the spirit of the Mountain was thinking; and looked up and saw jack-pines in the moon, and saw ghosts of old miners, and wondered about it. In the whole eastern dark wall of the Divide this night there was silence and the whisper of the wind, except in the ravine where we roared; and on the other side of the Divide was the great western slope, and the big plateau that went to Steamboat Springs, and dropped, and led you to the eastern Colorado desert and the Utah desert; all in darkness now as we fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. And beyond, beyond, over the Sierras the other side if Carson sink was bejeweled bay-encircled nightlike old Frisco of my dreams. We were situated on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess - across the night, eastward over the plains where somewhere a man with white hair was probably walking toward us with the Word and would arrive any minute and make us silent."

"Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream."

"Hateful bitch of a world, it wouldn't ever last."

"Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running?that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all."

"He could barely get a word so excited to live it."

"He doesn't need any money, all he needs is his rucksack with those little plastic bags of dried food and a good pair of shoes and off he goes and enjoys the privileges of a millionaire in surroundings like this."

"He had become completely mad in his movements; He seemed to be doing everything at the same time. It was a shaking of the head, up and down, sideways; jerky, vigorous hands; quick walking, sitting, crossing the legs, uncrossing, getting up, rubbing the hands, rubbing his fly, hitching his pants, looking up and saying 'Am,' and sudden slitting of the eyes to see everywhere; and all the time he was grabbing me by the ribs and talking, talking"

"He had never felt anything like that before - yet somehow he knew that from now on he would always feel like that, always, and something caught at his throat as he realized what a strange sad adventure life might get to be, strange and sad and still much more beautiful and amazing than he could ever have imagined because it was so really, strangely sad."

"He no longer cared about anything (as before) but now he also cared about everything in principle; that is to say, it was all the same to him and he belonged to the world and there was nothing he could do about it."

"He is a believer in life and he wants to go to Heaven but because he loves life so he embraces it so much he thinks he sins and will never see Heaven ... You could have ten thousand cold eyed Materialistic officials claim they love life too but can never embrace it so near sin and also never see Heaven - They will condemn the hot blooded life lover with their cold papers on a desk because they have no blood and therefore have no sin? No! They sin by lifelessness! They are the ogres of Law entering the Holy Realm of Sin!"

"He lived with his mother, father and sister; had a room of his own, with the fourth-floor windows staring on seas of rooftops and the glitter of winter nights when home lights brownly wave beneath the heater whiter blaze of stars--those stars that in the North, in the clear nights, all hang frozen tears by the billions, with January Milky Ways like silver taffy, veils of frost in the stillness, huge blinked, throbbing to the slow beat of time and universal blood."

"He said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York."

"He had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars."

"He seems to me to be headed for his ideal fate, which is compulsive psychosis dashed with a jigger of psychopathic irresponsibility and violence."

"He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings ? all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end."

"He has to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite feeling soul-exploratory for the tune of the moment that everybody knows it's not the tune that counts but IT."

"He was alone in the doorway, digging the street. Bitterness, recriminations, advice, morality, sadness--everything was behind him, and ahead of him was the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being."

"He was out to get back everything he'd lost; there was no end to his loss; this thing would drag on forever."

"He?s a great mysterious Bodhisattva I think maybe a reincarnation of Asagna the great Mahayana scholar of the old centuries. And who am I? I dunno, maybe you?re Goat."

"He wasn't drunk on liquor, just drunk on what he liked - crowds of people milling."

"Hell man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except that you've got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict."

"Hell! I?m glad I did it. It?s going to be a change. I call this life!"

"Here are the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. Those who see things differently. They do not dig rules. And do not respect the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify them or slander them. But the only thing you can not do is ignore them. Because they change things. Push the human race forward. And while some see them as crazy, we see them as geniuses. Because people crazy enough to believe they can change the world, are the ones that change."

"Her little shoulders drove me mad; I hugged her and hugged her. And she loved it."

"Here was a young kid like Dean had been; his blood boiled too much for him to bear; his nose opened up; no native strange saintliness to save him from the iron fate."

"Here?s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They?re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can?t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward. Maybe they have to be crazy. How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art? Or sit in silence and hear a song that?s never been written? Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels? While some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do... They?re not fond of rules and have no respect for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them but you can't ignore them because they change things. They push the human race forward and while some may see them as crazy, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."

"Here?s a guy and everybody?s there, right? Up to him to put down what?s on everybody?s mind. He starts the first chorus, then lines up his ideas, people, yeah, yeah, but get it, and then he rises to his fate and has to blow equal to it. All of a sudden somewhere in the middle of the chorus he gets it - everybody looks up and knows; they listen; he picks it up and carries. Time stops. He?s filling empty space with the substance of our lives, confessions of his bellybottom strain, remembrance of ideas, rehashes of old blowing. He has to blow across bridges and come back and do it with such infinite feeling soul-exploratory for the tune of the moment that everybody knows it?s not the tune that counts but IT."

"His chief hate was Washington bureaucracy; second to that, liberals; then cops."

"Here I was at the end of America... no more land... and nowhere was nowhere to go but back."

"His friends said, ?Why do you have that ugly thing hanging there?? And Bull said, ?I like it because it's ugly.? All his life was in that line."

"His daughters watched in the rain. The prettiest, shyest one hid far back in the field to watch and she had good reason because she was absolutely the most beautiful girl Dean and I ever saw in all our lives. She was about sixteen, and had Plains complexion like wild roses, and the bluest eyes, the most lovely hair, and the modesty and quickness of a wild antelope. At every look from us she flinched. She stood there with the immense winds that blew clear down from Saskatchewan knocking her hair about her lovely head like shrouds, living curls of them. She blushed and blushed... 'Oh a girl like that scares me,' I said. 'I'd give up everything and throw myself on her mercy and if she didn't want me I'd just as simply go and throw myself off the edge of the world'."

"Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America."

"History is best explained dramatically, because for God's sake nobody's going to tell me that massive Homeric war so to speak, between the Achaens and the Iliums was caused merely by some economic factor concerning trade..."

"How clear the realization one is going mad -- the mind has a silence, nothing happens in the physique, urine gathers in your loins, your ribs contract."

"Houses are full of things that gather dust"

"How is there laughter, how is there joy, as this world is always burning?"

"Human bones are but vain lines fade, the whole universe a blank mold of stars."

"I am an appearance. The world is an appearance. The bread I eat is an appearance. All wish't forth from Mind Essence due to Ignorance--I don't have to exist, I don't exist, I do exist-- Who cares? For the purposes of this world do nothing or do everything anyhow."

"How to meditate - lights are off fall, and your hands are intertwined in a trance erosion intraday as in the dose of heroin or morphine gland within the mental pouring liquid cheerful (liquid sacred) as if I Ahoy down gripping the parts of my body to the barrier fatal coma cures all pathogenetic - and erase what did not show them after even snatch - I - hope - you, or any balloon crazed remaining but the mind is empty, static - without ideas when you show ideas from afar with what qualify him - image format - was treated cynically - and fade and ideas not return never - and enjoyably aware for the first time that: thinking is the same therefore do not have to think anymore."

"I actually got so drunk I wrapped myself around the toilet bowl of the Scollay Square Cafe and got pissed and puked on all night long by a thousand sailors and seamen and when I woke up in the morning and found myself all covered and caked and unspeakably dirty I just like a good old Boston man walked down to the Atlantic Avenue docks and jumped into the sea."

"I am going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children."