But the more I read... after awhile... I begin to find they were all writing about the same thing, this same dull old here-today-gone-tomorrow scene... Shakespeare, Milton, Matthew Arnold, even Baudelaire, even this cat whoever he was that wrote Beowulf... the same scene for the same reasons and to the same end, whether it was Dante with his pit or Baudelaire with his pot... the same dull old scene...

You seem to forget, Miss Flinn, that this is an institution for the insane.

What do you think you are, for Chrissake, crazy or somethin'? Well you're not! You're not! You're no crazier than the average asshole out walkin' around on the streets and that's it.

Allen Ginsberg is a tremendous warrior as time goes by. He's a warrior first and a poet second.

I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismograph.

But he won’t let the pain blot out the humor no more’n he’ll let the humor blot out the pain.

Memory whispers someplace in that jumbled machinery.