Quotes by Lawrence Ferlinghetti

About Lawrence Ferlinghetti:

Lawrence Monsanto Ferlinghetti is an American poet, painter, liberal activist, and the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. Author of poetry, translations, fiction, theatre, art criticism, and film narration, he is best known for A Coney Island of the Mind (1958), a collection of poems that has been translated into nine languages, with sales of more than one million copies.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

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

I am awaiting perpetually and forever a renaissance of wonder

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I feel there is an angel in me' she'd say 'whom I am constantly shocking

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

See it was like this when we waltz into this place. A couple of papish cats is doing an Aztec two-step And I says Dad let's cut but then this dame comes up behind me see and says you and me could really exist Wow I says Only the next day she has bad ...

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Pity the nation whose people are sheep, and whose shepherds mislead them. Pity the nation whose leaders are liars, whose sages are silenced, and whose bigots haunt the airwaves. Pity the nation that raises not its voice, except to praise conquerors a...

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

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 atomic bombs can do.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Constantly risking absurdity and death whenever he performs above the heads of his audience, the poet, like an acrobat, climbs on rhyme to a high wire of his own making.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I am waiting for them to prove that God is really American.

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, I feel like telling him he's stabbing the independent bookstores in the back.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

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

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

We were just a one-room bookstore; we didn't have any money for lawyers.

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 Fascists to find out how the Nazis and Mussolini got into power.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

And the Blue Angels are coming back to scare the local population. I remember seeing old Vietnamese women ducking under the benches in Washington Square; they thought they were back in the war.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Author Bio

  • NameLawrence Ferlinghetti
  • DescriptionAmerican artist, writer and activist
  • BornMarch 24, 1919
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionOfficer; Poet; Writer; Publisher; Painter
  • AwardsJanus Pannonius International Poetry Prize