Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“I wish to descend in the social scale. High society is low society. I am a social climber climbing downward And the…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

The world is a beautiful place to be born into if you don't mind some people dying all the time or maybe…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Recipe For Happiness Khaborovsk Or Anyplace' One grand boulevard with trees with one grand cafe in sun with strong black coffee in…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Today America's on the wrong side of the world revolution. What I mean by that is, the world revolution is the people's…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

This is all very nice, because the ideas that Jack and the Beat generation stood for are needed today more than ever.…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

the poet like an acrobat climbs on rime to a high wire of his own making.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“Don’t Let That Horse . . .” from A Coney Island of the Mind. Don’t let that horse eat that violin cried…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

It's the story of an American who wants to become a dictator and goes to Europe with a sidekick to interview various…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I once started out to walk around the world but ended up in Brooklyn, that Bridge was too much for me.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

If you're going to be a writer you should sit down and write in the morning, and keep it up all day,…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

If you would be a poet, write living newspapers. Be a reporter from outer space, filing dispatches to some supreme managing editor…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

No, I didn't become disenchanted. I just couldn't paint like them.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Don't patronize the chain bookstores. Every time I see some author scheduled to read and sign his books at a chain bookstore,…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Anyone who saw Nagasaki would suddenly realize that they'd been kept in the dark by the United States government as to what…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

A lot of manuscripts that come in, you wonder by what outrageous fantasy the author believes that this should be pressed into…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I arrived in San Francisco in January 1951. After the Second World War, the population was so uprooted. Soldiers came back home…

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Don't bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I think if there's a great depression there might be some hope.

— Lawrence Ferlinghetti