21 Kenneth Patchen Quotes

Kenneth Patchen quotes

1. But genius is an enormous littleness, a trickling Of heart that covers alike the hare and the hunter.

2. Have you wondered why all the windows in heaven were broken? Have you seen the homeless in the grave of God's hand? Do you want to acquaint the larks with the fatuous music of war?

3. O my love my dear lady The world is not very big There is only room for our wonder And the light leaning winds of heaven Are not more sweet or pure Than your mouth on my throat O my love there are larks in our morning And the finding flame of your hands And the moss on the bank of the river And the butterflies And the whirling-mad Butterflies!

4. As we are so wonderfully done with each other We can walk into our separate sleep on floors of music where the milkwhite cloak of childhood lies

5. Your lips have splashed my dull house with print of flowers My hands are crooked where they spilled over your dear curving

6. To leave the earth was my wish, and no will stayed my rising. Early, before sun had filled the roads with carts Conveying folk to weddings and to murders; Before men left their selves of sleep, to wander In the dark of the world like whipped beasts.

7. The animal I wanted Couldn't get into the world... I can hear it crying When I sit like this away from life.

1. Do I not deal with angels When her lips I touch.

2. Dogs with broken legs are shot; men with broken souls write through the night.

3. Art is not to throw light but to be light...

4. It is fully practical to create that which has form in the silence. The noise art makes is usually heard by those whose lives listen to god. It is not adviseable to cheat that which has no other stake than the deeps and brights of all man.

5. Greatness and Truth can never be in danger from these murdering wretches. To perform one's duty, be it now, be it clean, and be it done with humility… A man is a sacred thing. ANY ACTION OR THOUGHT WHICH INJURES THE HUMAN IMAGINATION IS EVIL.

6. Literature is what you write when you think you should be saying something. Writing begins when you'd rather be doing anything else: and you've just done it.

7. Caring is the only daring.

8. I don't consider myself to be a painter. I think of myself as someone who has used the medium of painting in an attempt to extend - give an extra dimension to - the medium of words. It happens very often my writing with a pen is interrupted with my writing with a brush - but I think of both as writing.

9. Law and order embrace on hate's border.

10. What is a 'thing'? All is movement, a flowing. How stupid it is to speak of the 'mind'. There is a body; there is a mind: they are mixed up together. Shakespeare with a hole in his sock will not write the sonnet of a Shakespeare with socks intact.

11. All at Once Is What Eternity Is.

12. Snow is the only one of us that leaves no tracks.

13. O take heart, my brothers. Even now... with every leader & every resource & every strategy of every nation on Earth arrayed against Her - Even now, O even now, my brothers, Life is in no danger of losing the argument! - For after all … (as will be shown) She has only to change the subject.

14. The one who comes to question himself cares for mankind.