Lawrence Ferlinghetti quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from Lawrence Ferlinghetti on Wise Famous Quotes.

I am waiting for them to prove that God is really American.

We were just a one-room bookstore; we didn't have any money for lawyers.

Blink at the sunned scratch
and stumble into silence
pg. 55// A Coney Island of the Mind

Invent a new language anyone can understand.

It's much easier to consume the visual image than to read something.

Poetry must be capable of answering the challenge of apocalytpic times, even if this means sounding apocaltypic.

Her eyes downcast all the while/ and singing to herself
pg. 18// A Coney Island of the Mind

I think if there's a great depression there might be some hope.

I have dreamt that all my teeth fell out but my tongue lived to tell the tale
pg. 65// A Coney Island of the Mind

And I am waiting/ for Alice in Wonderland/ to retransmit to me/ her total dream of innocence
pg. 52// A Coney Island of the Mind

Everything the Beats stood for was the opposite of the dominant culture today.

Southern California, where the American Dream came too true.

Watching the world walk by
in its curious shoes
pg. 61// A Coney Island of the Mind

They were looking for a stable, but we didn't have one. In fact, we weren't very stable ourselves.

Think long thoughts in short sentences.

Make your mind learn its way around the heart.

We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.

Anyone who saw Nagasaki would suddenly realize that they'd been kept in the dark by the United States government as to what atomic bombs can do.

As I get older I perceive Life has its tail in its mouth.

And balancing on eye beams/ above a sea of faces/ paces his way/ to the other side of day
pg. 30// // A Coney Island of the Mind

Poetry is the shortest distance between two humans.

I am waiting
for the meek to be blessed
and inherit the earth ...
without taxes

I am waiting for the lost music to sound again in a new rebirth of wonder.

These are international criminals, and the spineless Democrats are doing nothing about it.

The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.

My country tears of thee.

I flew too near the sun
and my wax wings fell off
pg. 62// A Coney Island of the Mind

I have seen giraffes in junglejims
their necks like love
wound around the iron circumstances
of the world.

To say one is revolutionary is a little like saying one is a Zen Buddhist - if you say you are, you probably aren't.

Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.

You and me could really exist
pg. 22// // A Coney Island of the Mind

The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all 'bottom line' editors; everything depends on the money.

If you're too open-minded; your brains will fall out.

Our government is a bird with two right wings ... They're devoted to the perpetuation & spread of corporate capitalism.

Well, I didn't know how to draw very well back then, in the '40s and '50s.

And heard the green birds singing/ from the other side of silence
pg. 36// A Coney Island of the Mind

Is where I first/ fell in love/ with unreality
pg. 35// A Coney Island of the Mind

I see a similarity
between dogs and me.
Dogs are the true observers
walking up and down the world
thru the Molloy country.

I am going where turtles win
I am going
where conmen puke and die
Down the sad esplanades
of the official world.

Fuck Art, let's Dance!

Beauty stands and waits
with gravity
to start her death-defying leap

I have a feeling I'm falling on rare occasions but most of the time I have my feet on the ground I can't help it if the ground itself is falling.

We have to raise the consciousness; the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace.

I too have drunk and seen
the spider

I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
'whom I am
constantly shocking

For even bad poetry has relevance for what it does not say for what it leaves out.

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.

I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.

Almost every truly creative being alienated & expatriated in his own country

The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder

The future of publishing lies with the small and medium-sized presses, because the big publishers in New York are all part of huge conglomerates.

No, I didn't become disenchanted. I just couldn't paint like them.

When I was a boy I was my father.

I am waiting for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe for anarchy

When you're young, everything seems like a romance. At 96, I can still feel romantic about publishing young unknown writers.

The poet like an acrobat climbs on rime to a high wire of his own making.

There is an ecstatic mechanism in birds that makes them fly upwards in spite of worms.

A lot of manuscripts that come in, you wonder by what outrageous fantasy the author believes that this should be pressed into print.

Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them.

Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.

Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.