So I had a choice between going to a jail or going to a bughouse like a nice young middle-class student. So I chose to go to a very polite mental hospital. When I left eight months later, they said, You were never psychotic. You were just an average neurotic. – Allen Ginsberg
When you notice something clearly and see it vividly, it then becomes sacred. – Allen Ginsberg
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness. – Allen Ginsberg
Nobody saves America by sniffing cocaine,
jiggling your knees blankly in the rain.
When it snows in your nose
you catch cold in your brain. – Allen Ginsberg
Knowledge comes, but wisdom lingers. It may not be difficult to store up in the mind a vast quantity of facts within a comparatively short time, but the ability to form judgments requires the severe discipline of hard work and the tempering heat of experience and maturity. – Calvin Coolidge