Allen Ginsberg

Affection is the most important thing. And the quality of affection - with your friends, your lovers, your family. But particularly for your own generation.

When you notice something clearly and see it vividly, it then becomes sacred.

The soul is innocent and immortal, it should never die ungodly in an armed madhouse.

I saw the best minds of my generation who threw their watches off the roof to cast their ballot for Eternity outside of Time, & alarm clocks fell on their heads every day for the next decade.

America, I've given you all and now I'm nothing.

This is the one and only firmament; therefore it is the absolute world. There is no other world. The circle is complete. I am living in Eternity. The ways of this world are the ways of Heaven.

The whole blear world of smoke and twisted steel around my head in a railroad car, and my mind wandering past the rust into futurity: I saw the sun go down in a carnal and primeval world, leaving darkness to cover my railroad train because the other side of the world was waiting for dawn.

The poignancy of a photograph comes from looking back to a fleeting moment in a floating world. The transitoriness is what creates the sense of the sacred

There should be no distinction between what we write down, and what we really know.

You can't escape the past in Paris, and yet what's so wonderful about it is that the past and present intermingle so intangibly that it doesn't seem to burden.

Nobody saves America by sniffing cocaine. Jiggling your knees blankeyed in the rain, when it snows in your nose you catch cold in your brain.

Let the straight flower bespeak its purpose in straightness - to seek the light._x000D_ _x000D_ Let the crooked flower bespeak its purpose in crookedness - to seek the light._x000D_ _x000D_ Let the crookedness and straightness bespeak the light.

I learned a world from each / one whom I loved

Who’ll come lie down in the dark with me Belly to belly and knee to knee Who’ll look into my hooded eye Who’ll lie down under my darkened thigh?

Who can live with this Consciousness and not wake frightened at sunrise?

It isn't enough for your heart to break because everybody's heart is broken now.

The typewriter is holy the poem is holy the voice is holy the hearers are holy the ecstacy is holy!

Since art is merely and ultimately self-expressive, we conclude that the fullest art, the most individual, uninfluenced, unrepressed, uninhibited expression of art is true expression and the true art.