Bad poetry is caused by people who sit down and think, Now I am going to write a Poem.

I grow tired of 18th century moralities in a 20th century space-atomic age

Lighting new cigarettes, pouring more drinks. It has been a beautiful fight. Still is.

Unless it comes out of your soul like a rocket, unless being still would drive you to madness or suicide or murder, don't do it. unless the sun inside you is burning your gut, don't do it. when it is truly time, and if you have been chosen, it will do it by itself and it will keep on doing it until you die or it dies in you. there is no other way. and there never was.

They laughed. Things were funny. They weren't afraid to care. There was no sense to life, to the structure of things.

The trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed and their mothers have never been told to shut up.

People just weren't interesting. Maybe they weren't supposed to be. But animals, birds, even insects were. I couldn't understand it.