"The best minds are not in government. If any were, business would hire them away."

"I think that's thy poison of poetry and I think that's the poison of political activity. As soon as you've got an obligation, you're a prisoner of an obligation, you're no longer actually reacting ope…"

"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."

"The LSD was sort of human but I was getting big reptilian nonhuman scaly dragon cosmoses out of it which made me throw up and I didn't see why I should be intimidated by anyone's consciousness, even m…"

"I do not wish to escape to myself, I wish to escape from myself. I wish to obliterate my consciousness and my knowledge of independent existence, my guilts, my secretiveness."