I want a blaze of light to flame in me forever in a timeless, dear love of everything. And why should I pretend to want anything else?

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

Pain or love or danger makes you real again.

The taste of rain -- Why kneel?

You have absolutely no regard but yourself and your damned kicks. All you think about is what's hanging between your legs and how much money or fun you can get out of people and then you just throw them aside. Not only that but you're silly about it. It never occurs to you that life is serious and that there are people trying to make something decent out of it instead of just goofing all the time.

And when the fog's over and the stars and the moon come out at night it'll be a beautiful sight.

It’s a sort of furtiveness … Like we were a generation of furtive. You know, with an inner knowledge there’s no use flaunting on that level, the level of the ‘public’, a kind of beatness – I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know where we are – and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world … It’s something like that. So I guess you might say we’re a beat generation.