Lawrence Ferlinghetti Quotes

Lawrence Ferlinghetti offers a whimsical, dream-like glimpse into surreal love for the ordinary.

17 quotes

1. The pennycandystore beyond the El is where I first fell in love with unreality

2. It was a face which darkness could kill in an instant

3. Poetry is the shadow cast by our imaginations.

4. Nancy Peters

5. Gary Snyder

6. We have to raise the consciousness; the only way poets can change the world is to raise the consciousness of the general populace.

7. I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.

8. I certainly was surprised to be named Poet Laureate of this far-out city on the left side of the world, and I gratefully accept, for as I told the Mayor, "How could I refuse?" I'd rather be Poet Laureate of San Francisco than anywhere because this city has always been a poetic center, a frontier for free poetic life, with perhaps more poets and more poetry readers than any city in the world.

9. Paperbacks weren't considered real books in the book trade. Up till then it was just murder mysteries, potboilers, 25-cent pocket books sold in newsstands. When the New York publishers started publishing quality paperbacks, there was no place to buy them.

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

11. The paintings may communicate even better because people are lazy and they can look at a painting with less effort than they can read a poem.

12. Poetry can change the world, just like any art can change the world, by changing consciousness. Of course this was the great slogan of the nineteen sixites hippies’ revolution—enlarge the area of consciousness, which quite often was done by psychedelic means.

13. As I get older I perceive Life has its tail in its mouth.

14. The future of publishing lies with the small and medium-sized presses, because the big publishers in New York are all part of huge conglomerates.

15. 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.

16. There is an ecstatic mechanism in birds that makes them fly upwards in spite of worms.

17. I have a feeling I'm falling on rare occasions but most of the time I have my feet on the ground I can't help it if the ground itself is falling.