Richard Brautigan Quotes

“Sometimes life is merely a matter of coffee and whatever intimacy a cup of coffee affords.”

“I like to think
(it has to be!)
of a cybernetic ecology
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.”

“I had a good-talking candle last night in my bedroom. I was very tired but I wanted somebody to be with me, so I lit a candle and listened to its comfortable voice of light until I was asleep.”

“If you are thinking about something that happened a long time ago:
Somebody asked you a question and you did not know the answer.
That is my name.”

“I’ll affect you slowly
as if you were having a picnic in a dream.
There will be no ants.
It won’t rain.”

“I thought about it for awhile, hiding it from the rest of my mind. But I didn't ruin my birthday by secretly thinking about it too hard”

“The Beautiful Poem"

I go to bed in Los Angeles thinking
about you.

Pissing a few moments ago
I looked down at my penis
affectionately.

Knowing it has been inside
you twice today makes me
feel beautiful.”

“The Pill Versus the Springhill Mine Disaster

When you take your pill
it's like a mine disaster.
I think of all the people
lost inside you.”

“I'm in a constant process of thinking about things.”

“if a girl likes me a lot
and starts getting real nervous
and suddenly begins asking me funny questions
and looks sad if I give the wrong answers
and she says things like,
"Do you think it's going to rain?"
and I say, "It beats me,"
and she says, "Oh,"
and looks a little sad
at the clear blue California sky,
I think: Thank God, it's you, baby, this time
Instead of me.”

“Hinged to forgetfulness like a door,
she slowly closed out of sight,
and she was the woman I loved,
but too many times she slept like
a mechanical deer in my caresses,
and I ached in the metal silence
of her dreams.”

“One day
Time will die
And love will bury it”

“I have always wanted to write a book that ended with the word 'mayonnaise.”

“I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end.”

“Karma Repair Kit Items 1-4.

1. Get enough food to eat,
and eat it.

2. Find a place to sleep where it is quiet,
and sleep there.

3. Reduce intellectual and emotional noise
until you arrive at the silence of yourself,
and listen to it.

4.”

“I'll tell you about it because I am here and you are distant.”

“Boo, Forever

Spinning like a ghost
on the bottom of a
top,
I'm haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.”

“In Watermelon Sugar the deeds were done and done again as my life is done in watermelon sugar.”

“Probably the closest things to perfection are the huge absolutely empty holes that astronomers have recently discovered in space. If there's nothing there, how can anything go wrong?”

“I feel as if I am an ad
for the sale of a haunted house:

18 rooms
$37,000
I’m yours
ghosts and all.”

“Excuse me, I said. I thought you were a trout stream.
I'm not, she said.”

“I saw thousands of pumpkins last night
come floating in on the tide,
bumping up against the rocks and
rolling up on the beaches;
it must be Halloween in the sea”

“the sweet juices of your mouth
are like castles bathed in honey.
i've never had it done so gently before.
you have put a circle of castles
around my penis and you swirl them
like sunlight on the wings of birds.”

“He created his own Kool Aid reality and was able to illuminate himself by it.”

“All girls should have a poem
written for them even if
we have to turn this God-damn world
upside down to do it.”

“If you get hung up on everybody else's hang-ups, then the whole world's going to be nothing more than one huge gallows.”

“I’m haunted by all
the space that I
will live without
you.”

“I don't know these people and they aren't my flowers.”

“It's strange how the simple things in life go on while we become more difficult.”

“If you will die for me,
I will die for you
and our graves will be like two lovers washing
their clothes together
in a laundromat
If you will bring the soap
I will bring the bleach.”

“Her sunny side was always up.”

“For fear you will be alone
you do so many things
that aren’t you at all.”

“Burn all the maps to your body. I'm not here of my own choosing.”

“Elizabeth's voice had a door in it. When you opened that door you found another door, and that door opened yet another door. All the doors were nice and led out of her.”

“Messy, isn't it?”

“… what makes you older is when your bones, muscles and blood wear out, when the heart sinks into oblivion and all the houses you ever lived in are gone and people are not really certain that your civilization ever existed.”

“A Boat

O beautiful
was the werewolf
in his evil forest.
We took him
to the carnival
and he started
crying
when he saw
the Ferris wheel.
Electric
green and red tears
flowed down
his furry cheeks.
He looked
like a boat
out on the dark
water.”

“Our names were made for us in another century.”

“There are seductions that should be in the Smithsonian Institute, right next to The Spirit of St. Louis.</u”

“Everybody wants to go to bed
with everybody else, they're
lined up for blocks, so I'll
go to bed with you. They won't
miss us.”

“A friend came over to the house
a few days ago and read one of my poems.
He came back today and asked to read the
same poem over again. After he finished
reading it, he said, "It makes me want to write poetry."”

“… the Coleman lantern is the symbol of the camping craze that is currently sweeping America, with its unholy white light burning in the forests of America.”

“Everything smelled of sheep. The dandelions were suddenly more sheep than flower, each petal reflecting wool and the sound of a bell ringing off the yellow. But the thing that smelled the most like sheep, was the sun itself. When the sun went behind a cloud, the smell of sheep decreased, like standing on some old guy's hearing aid, and when the sun came back again, the smell of the sheep was loud, like a clap of thunder inside a cup of coffee.”

“I didn't know the full dimensions of forever, but I knew it was longer than waiting for Christmas to come.”

“Thinking hard about you
I got on the bus
and paid 30 cents car fare
and asked the driver for two transfers
before discovering
that I was
alone.”