Don't patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore, I feel like telling him he's stabbing the independent bookstores in the back.
Lawrence FerlinghettiI'd ban all automobiles from the central part of the city. You see, the automobile was just a passing fad. It's got to go. It's got to go a long way from here.
Lawrence FerlinghettiYou can publish a poem you think is a very important poem, and you don't hear a word from anyone. [...] You can publish a book of poetry by dropping it off a cliff and waiting to hear an echo. Quite often, you'll never hear a thing. So doing that, using older work, puts it in a context, and that sort of forces the reader to realize what its importance is-if it has any. Everything needs a context. You're not going to recognize a poet unless you have a context.
Lawrence FerlinghettiIf you're going to be a writer you should sit down and write in the morning, and keep it up all day, every day. Charles Bukowski, no matter how drunk he got the night before or no matter how hungover he was, the next morning he was at his typewriter. Every morning. Holidays, too. He'd have a bottle of whiskey with him to wake up with, and that's what he believed. That's the way you became a writer: by writing. When you weren't writing, you weren't a writer.
Lawrence FerlinghettiIf you would be a poet, write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor who believes in full disclosure and has a low tolerance for bullshit.
Lawrence FerlinghettiI certainly was surprised to be named Poet Laureate of this far-out city on the left side of the world, and I gratefully accept, for as I told the Mayor, "How could I refuse?" I'd rather be Poet Laureate of San Francisco than anywhere because this city has always been a poetic center, a frontier for free poetic life, with perhaps more poets and more poetry readers than any city in the world.
Lawrence FerlinghettiThe future of publishing lies with the small and medium-sized presses, because the big publishers in New York are all part of huge conglomerates.
Lawrence FerlinghettiAnyone who saw Nagasaki would suddenly realize that they'd been kept in the dark by the United States government as to what atomic bombs can do.
Lawrence FerlinghettiT.S. Eliot's influence was enormous on my generation. Much more than Ezra Pound. I actually had to put T.S. Eliot books out of the house because my poetry was so influenced. Everything I wrote sounded like Eliot.
Lawrence FerlinghettiThere is an ecstatic mechanism in birds that makes them fly upwards in spite of worms.
Lawrence FerlinghettiI didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.
Lawrence FerlinghettiWhen you're young, everything seems like a romance. At 96, I can still feel romantic about publishing young unknown writers.
Lawrence FerlinghettiThe art has to make it on its own, without explanations, and it’s the same for poetry. If the poem or the painting has to be explained, then it’s a failure in communication.
Lawrence FerlinghettiThey were looking for a stable, but we didn't have one. In fact, we weren't very stable ourselves.
Lawrence FerlinghettiI am waiting for the war to be fought which will make the world safe for anarchy
Lawrence FerlinghettiThis is all very nice, because the ideas that Jack and the Beat generation stood for are needed today more than ever. But I'm not so interested in nostalgia. I'm interested in the future.
Lawrence FerlinghettiPoetry must be capable of answering the challenge of apocalytpic times, even if this means sounding apocaltypic.
Lawrence FerlinghettiA lot of manuscripts that come in, you wonder by what outrageous fantasy the author believes that this should be pressed into print.
Lawrence FerlinghettiPoetry can change the world, just like any art can change the world, by changing consciousness. Of course this was the great slogan of the nineteen sixites hippies’ revolution—enlarge the area of consciousness, which quite often was done by psychedelic means.
Lawrence FerlinghettiI was on television a couple of years ago and the reporter asked me, "How does it feel being on mainstream media? It's not often poets get on mainstream media." I said, "Well I think you're the dominant media, the dominant culture, but you're not the mainstream media. The mainstream media is still the high culture of intellectuals: writers, readers, editors, librarians, professors, artists, art critics, poets, novelists, and people who think. They are the mainstream culture, even though you may be the dominant culture."
Lawrence FerlinghettiFreedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.
Lawrence FerlinghettiToday America's on the wrong side of the world revolution. What I mean by that is, the world revolution is the people's revolution, the liberation movements in all the third world countries, which when everyone tries to get started the U.S. stops.
Lawrence FerlinghettiRecipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace' One grand boulevard with trees with one grand cafe in sun with strong black coffee in very small cups. One not necessarily very beautiful man or woman who loves you. One fine day.
Lawrence FerlinghettiPoets, come out of your closets, Open your windows, open your doors, You have been holed up too long in your closed worlds... Poetry should transport the public/to higher places/than other wheels can carry it.
Lawrence FerlinghettiConstantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.
Lawrence FerlinghettiSee it was like this when we waltz into this place. A couple of papish cats is doing an Aztec two-step And I says Dad let's cut but then this dame comes up behind me see and says you and me could really exist Wow I says Only the next day she has bad teeth and really hates poetry.
Lawrence FerlinghettiI'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.
Lawrence FerlinghettiI once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn, that Bridge was too much for me.
Lawrence FerlinghettiWe'd like to just write nothing but lyric poetry. The trouble is, the individual is going along intent on his own personal gratifications and love affairs and financial affairs and everything else. But loping alongside him is this fascist lout who keeps trying to take over. And if you keep ignoring him, he gets bigger and bigger, so every once in a while the free individual has to turn away from his private pursuits and give this fascist lout a few clouts, and beat him down to size.
Lawrence FerlinghettiOur government is a bird with two right wings... They're devoted to the perpetuation & spread of corporate capitalism.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti