I am waiting for them to prove that God is really American.

Like a bowl of roses, a poem should not have to be explained.

We were just a one-room bookstore; we didn’t have any money for lawyers.

Well, I didn’t know how to draw very well back then, in the ’40s and ’50s.

The best writing is what’s right in front of you. Sometimes I’d walk down the street with poets and they wouldn’t see anything. I’d have to shake their arm and say, ‘Look! Look!

I’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.

This 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.

They were looking for a stable, but we didn’t have one. In fact, we weren’t very stable ourselves.

The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all ‘bottom line’ editors; everything depends on the money.

It’s much easier to consume the visual image than to read something.