Kenneth Patchen Quotes

The one who comes to question himself cares for mankind.

Destiny is the music of the improbable. Were it otherwise, almost anyone could exist.

Art is not to throw light but to be light.

Come now, my child, if we were planning to harm you, do you think we'd be lurking here beside the path in the very darkest part of the forest?

Everyman is me. I am his brother. No man is my enemy. I am Everyman and he is in and of me. This is my faith, my strength, my deepest hope, and my only belief.

God must have loved the People in Power, for he made them so very like their own image of him.

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

You will protect with the last drop of someone else's blood what was never yours.

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

Think enough and you won't know anything.

There are so many little dyings How do we know which one of them is death?

Caring is the only daring.

Gentle and giving-all the rest is treason.

All at Once Is What Eternity Is.

For greatness is only the drayhorse that coaxes The built cart out; and where we go is reason. But genius is an enormous littleness, a trickling Of heart that covers alike the hare and the hunter.

In the love of a man and a woman is the look of God looking.

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.

I think people need a little joy and humor as well as commitment in their lives

That which is not daring is nothing.

In literature as in life, to conform to anything is to knuckle under to your inferiors.

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

Law and order embrace on hate's border.

Now is then's only tomorrow.

The best hope is that one of these days the ground will get disgusted enough just to walk away - leaving people with nothing more to stand on than what they have so bloody well stood for up to now.

Why should anyone be surprised at what the men "in power" are capable of --didn't every mad-Judas one of them begin his career by slowly & brutally strangling an innocent child?

Out of slavery, freedom --yes, & roses from the pig's behind.

Take taking from those that give & nobody anywhere will need any more such gifts.

Law & order embrace on hate's border.

If the truth is inside, And the form is outside, What is the truth of sleep?