Tinselworm (2008)
Remarkable Guide to the Orchestra (2008)
“We must not let them go into the fourth and fifth grades not knowing how to read.”
The Paris Review interview (2010)
Context: Our education system has gone to hell. It’s my idea from now on to stop spending money educating children who are sixteen years old. We should put all that money down into kindergarten. Young children have to be taught how to read and write. If children went into the first grade knowing how to read and write, we’d be set for the future, wouldn’t we? We must not let them go into the fourth and fifth grades not knowing how to read. So we must put out books with educational pictures, or use comics to teach children how to read. When I was five years old, my aunt gave me a copy of a book of wonderful fairy tales called Once Upon a Time, and the first fairy tale in the book is “Beauty and the Beast.” That one story taught me how to read and write because I looked at the picture of that beautiful beast, but I so desperately wanted to read about him too.
Source: The Dharma Bums (1958)
Context: "Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea," said Japhy. "Remember that book I told you about; the first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy."
As quoted by Lama Surya Das, Huffington Post April 28, 2010 http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lama-surya-das/spiritual-life-wisdom-an_b_552927.html.
Miller Newton (1981). Gone Way Down: Teenage Drug-Use is a Disease, American Studies Press, Tampa, FL, pg 37.
On Teenage Drug Use
