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

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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Lawrence Ferlinghetti
Age: 101 †
Born: 1919
Born: March 24
Died: 2021
Died: February 22
Activist Shareholder
Journalist
Military Officer
Painter
Peace Activist
Playwright
Poet
Publisher
Translator
Writer
Yonkers
New York State
Feilingedi
Lawrence Ferling
L. Ferlinghetti
Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti
Makes
Upwards
Ecstatic
Worms
Mechanism
Birds
Spite
Bird

More quotes by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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Anyone who saw Nagasaki would suddenly realize that they'd been kept in the dark by the United States government as to what atomic bombs can do.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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As I get older I perceive Life has its tail in its mouth.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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We have seen the best minds of our generation destroyed by boredom at poetry readings.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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The real literary editors have mostly been fired. Those that remain are all 'bottom line' editors everything depends on the money.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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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.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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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.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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I am waiting for the lost music to sound again in a new rebirth of wonder.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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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
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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
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In Plato's republic, poets were considered subversive, a danger to the republic. I kind of relish that role. So I see my present role as a gadfly, to use my soapbox to promote my various ideas and obsesions.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say 'whom I am constantly shocking
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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My country tears of thee.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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We were just a one-room bookstore we didn't have any money for lawyers.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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I'm reading a book about Romaine Brooks, a wonderful painter from early in the last century.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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Today America's on the wrong side of the world revolution. What I mean by that is, the world revolution is the people's revolution, the liberation movements in all the third world countries, which when everyone tries to get started the U.S. stops.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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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.
Lawrence Ferlinghetti
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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
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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