Ferlinghetti Poetry Quotes

#1. I am waiting for the war to be fought
which will make the world safe for anarchy

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#2. We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#3. With words we govern men.

Benjamin Disraeli

#4. None but the brave deserve the fair.

John Dryden

#5. Poets, 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 Ferlinghetti

#6. Almost every truly creative being alienated & expatriated in his own country

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#7. Not only is man what he conceives himself to be, but he is also only what he wills himself to be after this thrust toward existence. Man is nothing else but what he makes of himself. Such

Jean-Paul Sartre

#8. The 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 Ferlinghetti

#9. Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#10. Poetry must be capable of answering the challenge of apocalytpic times, even if this means sounding apocaltypic.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#11. Recipe 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 Ferlinghetti

#12. Think long thoughts in short sentences.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#13. subway escalators;

Nicholson Baker

#14. There's nothing I wouldn't do, no matter how dirty or hard.

Lilly Ledbetter

#15. That is what you do when you breathe, you trespass, again and again you trespass on the world.

Karl Ove Knausgard

#16. 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 Ferlinghetti

#17. I've always been a fan of poetry. I grew up with Lawrence Ferlinghetti and the Beat poets. I really followed that stuff for a while. I just love the way people threw words around like they were painting.

Ric Ocasek

#18. I get into all sorts of trouble with my publicists and with newspapers because I won't do photographs.

M. J. Hyland

#19. I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say
'whom I am
constantly shocking

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#20. Poetry is the shortest distance between two humans.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#21. For even bad poetry has relevance for what it does not say for what it leaves out.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#22. Or we can settle in and watch every single episode of Sherlock." "Now you're talking." Benedict Cumberbatch is my homeboy.

Autumn Doughton

#23. I'm 48. For a while after 'The Jerk' (movie) I had a feeling of failure. I was a little scared. First people discover you and they love you. You get big and then you fail. And people are glad that you fail. But I've always come back and I've started to trust myself.

Steve Martin

#24. Poetry is a naked woman, a naked man, and the distance between them.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#25. Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

#26. T.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 Ferlinghetti

#27. I loved the True Crime Story "Fighting the Devil" by Jeannie Walker. It is such an interesting book.

Jeannie Walker

#28. The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti