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.

I learned a world from each / one whom I loved

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

First thoughts are the strongest.

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of the night.

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

Recent history is the record of one vast conspiracy to impose one level of mechanical consciousness on mankind.