Explore Quotes by Richard Brautigan

The bees in my stomach are dead and getting used to it.

Her sunny side was always up.

Boo, Forever Spinning like a ghost on the bottom of a top, I'm haunted by all the space that I will live without you.

Hinged to forgetfulness like a door, she slowly closed out of sight, and she was the woman I loved, but too many times she slept like a mechanical deer in my caresses, and I ached in the metal silence of her dreams.

I had a good-talking candle last night in my bedroom. I was very tired but I wanted somebody to be with me, so I lit a candle and listened to its comfortable voice of light until I was asleep.

Love Poem ـــــــــ It's so nice to wake up in the morning all alone and not have to tell somebody you love them when you don't love them any more.

I had become so quiet and so small in the grass by the pond that I was barely noticeable, hardly there... I sat there watching their living room shining out of the dark beside the pond. It looked like a fairy tale functioning happily in the post-World War II gothic of America before television crippled the imagination of America and turned people indoors and away from living out their own fantasies with dignity... Anyway, I just kept getting smaller and smaller beside the pond, more and more unnoticed in the darkening summer grass until I disappeared into the 32 years that have passed since then.

If you get hung up on everybody else's hang-ups, then the whole world's going to be nothing more than one huge gallows.

We could see the children's toys here and there, and we saw a game that the children had made themselves out of dirt, deer antlers and abalone shells, but the game was so strange that only children could tell what it was. Perhaps it wasn't a game at all, only the grave of a game.

Night was coming on in, borrowing the light. It had started out borrowing just a few cents worth of the light, but now it was borrowing thousands of dollars worth of the light every second. The light would soon be gone, the bank closed, the tellers unemployed, the bank president a suicide.

A sombrero fell out of the sky and landed on the main street of town in front of the mayor, his cousin, and a person out of work. The day was scrubbed clean by the desert air. The sky was blue. It was the blue of human eyes, waiting for something to happen. There was no reason for a sombrero to fall out of the sky. No airplane or helicopter was passing overhead and it was not a religious holiday.

Gee, You're so Beautiful That It's Starting to Rain Oh, Marcia, I want your long blonde beauty to be taught in high school, so kids will learn that God lives like music in the skin and sounds like a sunshine harpsicord. I want high school report cards to look like this: Playing with Gentle Glass Things A Computer Magic A Writing Letters to Those You Love A Finding out about Fish A Marcia's Long Blonde Beauty A+!

I saw thousands of pumpkins last night come floating in on the tide, bumping up against the rocks and rolling up on the beaches; it must be Halloween in the sea

The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster When you take your pill it's like a mine disaster. I think of all the people lost inside you.

Your Catfish Friend If I were to live my life in catfish forms in scaffolds of skin and whiskers at the bottom of a pond and you were to come by one evening when the moon was shining down into my dark home and stand there at the edge of my affection and think, “It's beautiful here by this pond. I wish somebody loved me,” I'd love you and be your catfish friend and drive such lonely thoughts from your mind and suddenly you would be at peace, and ask yourself, “I wonder if there are any catfish in this pond? It seems like a perfect place for them.

I thought about it for awhile, hiding it from the rest of my mind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking about it too hard

I'll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.

This morning I saw a coyote walking through the sagebrush right at the very edge of the ocean ― next stop China. The coyote was acting like he was in New Mexico or Wyoming, except that there were whales passing below. That’s what this country does for you. Come down to Big Sur and let your soul have some room to get outside its marrow.

because you always have a clock strapped to your body, it's natural that i should think of you as the correct time: with your long blonde hair at 8:03, and your pulse-lightning breasts at 11:17, and your rose-meow smile at 5:30, i know i'm right.

We looked like a parade barely moving toward YOU MIGHT GET LOST.

Elizabeth's voice had a door in it. When you opened that door you found another door, and that door opened yet another door. All the doors were nice and led out of her.