I don't consider myself to be a painter. I think of myself as someone who has used the medium of painting in an attempt to extend - give an extra dimension to - the medium of words. It happens very often my writing with a pen is interrupted with my writing with a brush - but I think of both as writing.
Kenneth PatchenLiterature is what you write when you think you should be saying something. Writing begins when you'd rather be doing anything else: and you've just done it.
Kenneth PatchenCome now, my child, if we were planning to harm you, do you think we'd be lurking here beside the path in the very darkest part of the forest?
Kenneth PatchenIt is fully practical to create that which has form in the silence. The noise art makes is usually heard by those whose lives listen to god. It is not adviseable to cheat that which has no other stake than the deeps and brights of all man.
Kenneth PatchenGreatness and Truth can never be in danger from these murdering wretches. To perform one's duty, be it now, be it clean, and be it done with humilityโฆ A man is a sacred thing. ANY ACTION OR THOUGHT WHICH INJURES THE HUMAN IMAGINATION IS EVIL.
Kenneth PatchenIt'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 Patchen