Allen Ginsberg

I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked, dragging themselves through the negro streets at dawn looking for an angry fix, angelheaded hipsters burning for the ancient heavenly connection to the starry dynamo in the machinery of night.

Holy the cocks of the angels!

To be good, you've got to be a little crazy.

I don't think there's any such thing as an ugly person. There's just a person who doesn't know what to do with themselves.

My own first principle of life: to be honest, to be simple, to be myself, to be an American, a Jew, a poet, a homosexual, a mystic, a Buddhist, a father, a son, a lover, a friend, a neighbor, a citizen, a human being, a creature of the earth.

The only thing that endures is love.

We're all golden sunflowers inside.

If I look at my work, I think the most important thing is the honesty.

I'm a Buddhist, and I'm a Jew, and I'm a gay man, and I'm a poet, and I'm an American, and I'm a human being. I'm all of those things.

Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.

The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it. Resist it, and your soul will grow sick with longing for the things it has forbidden to itself, with desire for what its monstrous laws have made monstrous and unlawful.

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

I'm a sex maniac. I'm a pervert. I'm a homosexual. I'm a drug addict. I'm a communist. I'm a Jew. I'm all those things.

The best poems are not written, they're ejaculated.

I want to be a saint, a madman, a criminal, a prophet, a god, a monster, a genius, an ordinary man, a holy man, a sexual maniac, a mystic, a poet, a lover, a father, a son, a brother, a friend, a neighbor, a citizen, a human being, a creature of the earth.

We are in a time of great change, and we are all part of it. We are all witnesses to it. We are all participants in it.

I'm a great believer in the power of the word, and the power of the image, and the power of the sound.

The greatest thing in the world is to be yourself.

I am a poet, and I am a human being. I am a creature of the earth. I am a creature of the universe. I am a creature of God.

The universe is a vast and mysterious place, and we are all part of it.