I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull... I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.

The fact to which we have got to cling, as to a lifebelt, is that it is possible to be a normal decent person and yet be fully alive.

I want people to bow as they see me and say he is gifted with poetry, he has seen the presence of the creator.

America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

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

Poets are Damned... but See with the Eyes of Angels.

America, how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?

Democracy! Bah! When I hear that I reach for my feather boa!

Poetry is the one place where people can speak their original human mind. It is the outlet for people to say in public what is known in private.

Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.

Fortunately art is a community effort - a small but select community living in a spiritualized world endeavoring to interpret the wars and the solitudes of the flesh.

The weight of the world is love. Under the burden of solitude, under the burden of dissatisfaction.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.

The only thing that can save the world is the reclaiming of the awareness of the world. That's what poetry does.

My own experience is that a certain kind of genius among students is best brought out in bed.

Ultimately Warhol's private moral reference was to the supreme kitsch of the Catholic church.

Whoever controls the media, the images, controls the culture.

Poetry is not an expression of the party line. It's that time of night, lying in bed, thinking what you really think, making the private world public, that's what the poet does.

I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was talking through an empty skull... I wasn't thinking my own thoughts or saying my own thoughts.

Follow your inner moonlight dont hide the madness.

I had a moment of clarity saw the feeling in the heart of things walked out to the garden crying.

First thought best thought.

Night is the wonderful opportunity to take rest to forgive to smile to get ready for all the battles that you have to fight tomorrow.

Marijuana is a useful catalyst for specific optical and aural aesthetic perceptions. I apprehended the structure of certain pieces of jazz and classical music in a new manner under the influence of marijuana, and these apprehensions have remained valid in years of normal consciousness.

We're all golden sunflowers inside.

I would say that Times Square was the central hangout for Burroughs, Kerouac, and myself from about 1945 to 1948.

To gain your own voice, you have to forget about having it heard.

Almost every wise saying has an opposite one, no less wise, to balance it.

But this is a true saying among men: the gifts of enemies are no gifts and profitless.

I've done a lot of acting. I'm not saying I'm the greatest, but I'd love to act, I'd love to sing.

Let me start by saying, I'm utterly disgusted with the former members of the Dead Kennedys.

That other saying, I'm a part of all that I have met, I think that would have to begin with my wonderful parents back in Atlanta when I was a youngster five years old I was tongue tied.

But clearly at the same time you've got to get out there and connect with voters and actually respond to the needs, the frustrations, whatever problems their now saying are not being adequately solved.

The Kiss scene was attempted three times. The first was in a peculiar spot of the fort on the ground level. It felt forced to me, and I knew right away that, in spite of what others were saying, it was dead wrong.

I am saying pornography hurts anyone who reads it, garbage in, garbage out.

I was in the middle of a crossroads, which is a nice way of saying crisis, physically, emotionally and spiritually. You know the physical part. We just talked about it.

I am a genius. Then it amused me to keep saying so, but now it does not. I expected to be happy sometime. Now I know I shall never be.

A salute from this corner to President Bush for saying he was willing to investigate raising or eliminating the cap on salaries subject to the Social Security tax.

Love in the real world means saying you're sorry 10 times a day.

I had something I was trying to say and sometimes the message is an easy transmission and sometimes it's a difficult one but I love the power of saying it so I'm gonna do it whether it's hard or easy.

And, quite frankly, I fully expected to be charged with murder, because they weren't charging anybody. I did it in terms of, I felt like I was throwing down the gauntlet saying look, this is what happened. There's a family out there that needed to know what happened.

I know I stand visibly onstage, but my function is still unseen, because I rarely see the immediate results of what I am saying or doing or writing.

And before our current legislature adjourns, we intend to become the first state of full and true choice by saying to every low and middle-income Hoosier family, if you think a non-government school is the right one for your child, you're as entitled to that option as any wealthy family; here's a voucher, go sign up.

They give me the money, I give them the book. Having input into the adaptation would be kind of like selling a house and coming back three years later and saying, 'Paint it this color!'

You know it's hard to hear what a bearded man is saying. He can't speak above a whisker.

We had an eyeball-to-eyeball agreement at a restaurant before I came back that, if I came back, he would never talk to me that way again or I was simply saying no.

So, in a way I was hedging and saying that if the Olympic stuff doesn't work out at least I can be a lawyer.

I hadn't even watched '24' before, and the audition was kind of far away. When I got the material, there wasn't a character yet, so it almost seemed like an assistant to Jack Bauer saying, 'Yes, sir. No, sir.'

Music is more emotional than prose, more revolutionary than poetry. I'm not saying I've got the answers, just a of questions that I don't hear other artists asking.