Literary Birthday – 24 March – Lawrence Ferlinghetti

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was born 24 March 1919 and died 22 February 2021.

Quotes

1. Poetry is eternal graffiti written in the heart of everyone.
2. Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.
3. I didn’t know that painters and writers retired. They’re like soldiers – they just fade away.
4. The art has to make it on its own, without explanations, and it’s the same for poetry. If the poem or the painting has to be explained, then it’s a failure in communication.
5. Don’t bow down to critics who have not themselves written great masterpieces.
6. If you’re going to be a writer you should sit down and write in the morning, and keep it up all day, every day. Charles Bukowski, no matter how drunk he got the night before or no matter how hungover he was, the next morning he was at his typewriter. Every morning. Holidays, too. He’d have a bottle of whiskey with him to wake up with, and that’s what he believed. That’s the way you became a writer: by writing. When you weren’t writing, you weren’t a writer.
7. Freedom of speech is always under attack by Fascist mentality, which exists in all parts of the world, unfortunately.
8. To say one is revolutionary is a little like saying one is a Zen Buddhist – if you say you are, you probably aren’t.
9. Make your mind learn its way around the heart.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti was an American poet, painter, and socialist activist. He was also the co-founder of City Lights Booksellers & Publishers. He was best known for A Coney Island of the Mind, a poetry collection that has been translated into nine languages, with sales of more than one million copies.

Source for quotes

 by Amanda Patterson

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