It's dark out, Jack, the stations out there don't identify themselves, we're in it raw-blind like burned rats, it's running out all around us, the footprints of the beast, one nobody has any notion of. The white and vacant eyes of something above there, something that doesn't know we exist. I smell heartbreak up there, Jack, a heartbreak at the center of things, and in which we don't figure at all.
Kenneth PatchenWhat is a 'thing'? All is movement, a flowing. How stupid it is to speak of the 'mind'. There is a body; there is a mind: they are mixed up together. Shakespeare with a hole in his sock will not write the sonnet of a Shakespeare with socks intact.
Kenneth PatchenIn literature as in life, to conform to anything is to knuckle under to your inferiors.
Kenneth PatchenWhy shouldn't you think it's crazy to believe in a green deer? All your life you have been taught to believe in only what you can use-to set on the table, to put in the bank, to build a house with. What possible use would a green deer be to anyone? Who would believe in a man with a blazing bush in his cart? Then let me tell you that it is beliefs just such as these that are the only hope of the world. Let me tell you that until men are ready to believe in the green deer and the strange carter, we shall not lift our noses above the bloody mess we have made of our living.
Kenneth Patchen