Kenneth Patchen Quotes

The question is not: do we believe in God? but rather: does God believe in us? And the answer is: only an unbeliever could have created our image of God; and only a false God could be satisfied with it. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Modern scientific accomplishments" --a wealth of methods coupled with a poverty of intentions which, having nearly exhausted the hell-potential of the earth, move on now to the first frontier of the heavens. ~ Kenneth Patchen

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

Humanity is a good thing. Perhaps we can arrange the murder of a sizable number of people to save it. ~ Kenneth Patchen

I don't consider myself to be a painter. I think of myself as someone who has used the medium of painting in an attempt to extend - give an extra dimension to - the medium of words. It happens very often my writing with a pen is interrupted with my writing with a brush - but I think of both as writing. ~ Kenneth Patchen

This is the evening of the two-fisted prayer ~ Kenneth Patchen

Any who live, stand alone in one place, together. ~ Kenneth Patchen

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

It is fully practical to create that which has form in the silence. The noise art makes is usually heard by those whose lives listen to god. It is not adviseable to cheat that which has no other stake than the deeps and brights of all man. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Stirred...the fur-toothed graves of young boys...a thousand slain in the time it would take to do love with a pretty girl or think of a new God. ~ Kenneth Patchen

What is a 'thing'? All is movement, a flowing. How stupid it is to speak of the 'mind'. There is a body; there is a mind: they are mixed up together. Shakespeare with a hole in his sock will not write the sonnet of a Shakespeare with socks intact. ~ Kenneth Patchen

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. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Man is not to direct or to be directed anymore than a tree or a cloud or a stone

Man is not to rule or be ruled anymore than a faith or a truth or a love

Man is not to doubt or to be doubted anymore than a wave or a seed or a fire

There is no problem in living which life hasn't answered to its own need

And we cannot direct, rule, or doubt what is beyond our highest ability to understand we can only be humble before it we can only worship ourselves because we are a part of it

The eye in the leaf is watching out of our fingers
The ear in the stone is listening through our voices
The thought of the wave is thinking in our dreams
The faith of the seed is building with our deaths ~ Kenneth Patchen

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

I got the fat poet into a corner and told him he was writing shit and couldn't get away with it

Now it is night and time
for sleep. Everyone is
tired

from garbage-glutting
lifting their snouts
from the trough
long enough
to ease their gut -
I won't urge the point.

Gold-plated poems
to stuff up
their mind's ass

or politics
watered down so as
not to scare the blue bloods
Boo! you well-fed bastards ~ Kenneth Patchen

The Reason for Skylarks

It was nearly morning when the giant
Reached the tree of children.
Their faces shone like white apples
On the cold dark branches
And their dresses and little coats
Made sodden gestures in the wind.

He did not laugh or weep or stamp
His heavy feet. He set to work at once
Lifting them tenderly down
Into a straw basket which was fixed
By a golden strap to his shoulder.
Only one did he drop - a soft pretty child
Whose hair was the color of watered milk.
She fell into the long grass
And he could not find her
Though he searched until his fingers
Bled and the full light came.

He shook his fist at the sky and called
God a bitter name.
But no answer was made and the giant
Got down on his knees before the tree
And putting his hands about the trunk
Shook
Until all the children had fallen
Into the grass. Then he pranced and stamped
Them to jelly. And still he felt no peace.
He took his half-full basket and set it afire,
Holding it by the handle until
Everything had been burned. He saw now
Two men on steaming horses approaching
From the direction of the world
And taking a little silver flute
Out of his pocket he played tune
After tune until they came up to him. ~ Kenneth Patchen

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? ~ Kenneth Patchen

I want to buy me a hat with a golden feather & a book with the confessions of God in it ~ Kenneth Patchen

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

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

She smiled like a story entering the mind of a cat. ~ Kenneth Patchen The Journal Of Albion Moonlight

All at Once Is What Eternity Is. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Think enough and you won't know anything. ~ Kenneth Patchen

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

There are so many little dyings that it doesn't matter which of them is death. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Law and order embrace on hate's border. ~ Kenneth Patchen

What is the function of man? Surely the sheep can get along without him; horses run better wild; rifles make nothing; of what good are banks when ninety-nine percent of us have no money? - I have said: what are we on earth for? WE SERVE NO PURPOSE IN NATURE. It is my guess that we are slated for extinction. ~ Kenneth Patchen

I think you will agree that I am alive in every part of this book; turn back twenty, thirty, one hundred pages - I am back there. That is why I hate the story; characters are not snakes that they must shed their skins on every page - there can only be one action: what a man is. When you have understood this, you will be through with novels. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Do I not deal with angels When her lips I touch. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Why shouldn't you think it's crazy to believe in a green deer? All your life you have been taught to believe in only what you can use-to set on the table, to put in the bank, to build a house with. What possible use would a green deer be to anyone? Who would believe in a man with a blazing bush in his cart? Then let me tell you that it is beliefs just such as these that are the only hope of the world. Let me tell you that until men are ready to believe in the green deer and the strange carter, we shall not lift our noses above the bloody mess we have made of our living ~ Kenneth Patchen

That which is not daring is nothing. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Nobody's a long time. ~ Kenneth Patchen

People don't want to be healed. They want a nice juicy wound that will show well when they put neon lights around it. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Law & order embrace on hate's border. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Greatness and Truth can never be in danger from these murdering wretches. To perform one's duty, be it now, be it clean, and be it done with humility ... A man is a sacred thing. ANY ACTION OR THOUGHT WHICH INJURES THE HUMAN IMAGINATION IS EVIL. ~ Kenneth Patchen

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

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. ~ Kenneth Patchen

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

The one who comes to question himself cares for mankind. ~ Kenneth Patchen

Our supper is plain but we are very wonderful. ~ Kenneth Patchen

It's dark out, Jack, the stations out there don't identify themselves, we're in it raw-blind like burned rats, it's running out all around us, the footprints of the beast, one nobody has any notion of. The white and vacant eyes of something above there, something that doesn't know we exist. I smell heartbreak up there, Jack, a heartbreak at the center of things, and in which we don't figure at all. ~ Kenneth Patchen

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? ~ Kenneth Patchen

Never oppose what seems strange in yourself. That is the only part which is aware. ~ Kenneth Patchen

I began to think that the finest modern writer was the screen actor. This was in the spirit of the Fifties where a very antiliterary literature was emerging - Kenneth Patchen and others. I kind of believed what Nietzsche said, that nothing not written in your blood is worth reading; it's just more pollution of the airwaves. ~ Jack Nicholson

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

Even non-religious folks should read the key Bible stories. It's essential for cultural literacy. Knowing these stories helps in understanding the many Biblical references in literature and art. ~ Kenneth E. Walsh

When I was growing up, Mandela's name was synonymous with terror. We were scared of him. You couldn't see any photos of him. A photo of him could have gotten you in jail. ~ Kenneth Bonert

Readers regularly ask what can go wrong but almost never what could positively surprise. ~ Kenneth Fisher

By all but the pathologically romantic, it is now recognized that this is not the age of the small man. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

One of the greatest pieces of economic wisdom is to know what you do not know. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

The assertion that everyone benefits simultaneously from free trade is simply incorrect. ~ Kenneth Rogoff

Scrum embraces the fact that in product development, some level of variability is required in order to build something new. ~ Kenneth S. Rubin

I don't fear jail because I know I'm not guilty. I know I did nothing wrong. I did nothing criminal and I also believe my God will get me through this. ~ Kenneth Lay

My name is not 'The Best Player in Baseball.' My name is George Kenneth Griffey, Jr. ~ Ken Griffey, Jr.

God put laws into being - we put them into motion. ~ Kenneth Copeland

He accomplished this primarily by hooking up with his best friend, Henry Goldman, before the Goldman Sachs partnership. (They toyed with creating Goldman and Lehman but instead decided on splitting the profits 50/50.) ~ Kenneth L. Fisher

She is a reflection of comfortable middle-class values that do not take seriously the continuing unemployment. What I particularly regret is that she does not take seriously the intellectual decline. Having given up the Empire and the mass production of industrial goods, Britain's future lay in its scientific and artistic pre-eminence. Mrs Thatcher will be long remembered for the damage she has done. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Suspect all of your favorite sentences. ~ Kenneth Atchity

Seth's clock had been set on survival so long that he didn't realize that he was starving himself of an essential element of being, that of having fun ~ Kenneth Eade

A somewhat casual observer from outer space might well deduce that the course of evolution in this planet had produced a species of large four-wheeled bugs with detachable brains; peculiar animals which rested when they sent their brains away from them but performed in rather predictable manner when their brains were recalled. ~ Kenneth E. Boulding

In the course of my lifetime, that world went from violence to a kind of peace. ~ Kenneth Branagh

I consider myself a significant supporter of any candidate I work for, and I am certainly generous, I think, with my own funds. ~ Kenneth Langone

To learn from the past is good, but to live there is a waste. To plan for the future is good, but to live there is a waste. You are happiest and most productive in life when you are living in the present. ~ Kenneth H. Blanchard

1. Keep speculation and investments separate.
2. Don't be fooled by a name.
3. Be wary of new promotions.
4. Give due consideration to market ability.
5. Don't buy without proper facts.
6. Safeguard purchases through diversification.
7. Don't try to diversify by buying different securities of the same company.
8. Small companies should be carefully scrutinized.
9. Buy adequate security, not super abundance.
10. Choose your dealer and buy outright. (Babson abhorred any type of margin or installment payment plans and, in fact, claimed he never borrowed money.) ~ Kenneth L. Fisher

A white crowned night sparrow sings as the moon sets. Thunder growls far off. Our campfire is a single light. Amongst a hundred peaks and waterfalls. The manifold voices of falling water Take all night. Wrapped in your down bag Starlight on you cheeks and eyelids Your breath comes and goes In a tiny cloud in the frosty night. Ten thousand birds sing in the sunrise. Ten thousand years revolve without change. All this will never be again. ~ Kenneth Rexroth

Without the mind the body is nothing, without the body the mind is nothing. ~ Kenneth G. Ortiz

Library stacks from this perspective are not a repository; they are a crowd. ~ Kenneth A. Bruffee

The recognized achievements of some Negroes, despite rigid racial barriers, indicate that society by its prejudices may be depriving itself of valuable contributions from many others. It is now doubtful whether America can afford the luxury of such a waste of human resources. ~ Kenneth Clark

Like Dad Nelson said, "The time will come that you will need faith, either for yourself, or for some member of your family. And if you haven't kept your faith strong, you'll be at a disadvantage. ~ Kenneth E. Hagin

Individuality: ten. Cautiousness: three. Combativeness: nine." She looked over and gave me a wink. "Well, what did you expect from a pirate's daughter? Hope: eight. Amativeness. What's that?"
Kate acutally blushed. "I think it has something to do with your attractiveness to the opposite sex."
"Ten," said Nadira, smiling modestly.
(Skybreaker by Kenneth Oppel) ~ Kenneth Oppel

Judging a book by its cover was standard practice in human relations. ~ Kenneth Eade

One thing they don't tell you about doing experimental physics is that sometimes you must work under adverse conditions ... like a state of sheer terror. ~ William Kenneth Hartmann

The transmission systems are still regulated. ~ Kenneth Lay

I have more trouble with D. L. Moody than with any other man I've ever met. - D. L. MOODY ~ Kenneth D. Boa

The general uncertainty about the prospects of medical treatment is socially handled by rigid entry requirements. These are designed to reduce the uncertainty in the mind of the consumer as to the quality insofar as this is possible. I think this explanation, which is perhaps the naive one, is much more tenable than any idea of a monopoly seeking to increase incomes. ~ Kenneth Arrow

We're not just going to see mid-sized banks go under in the next few months, we're going to see a whopper. ~ Kenneth Rogoff

None of us gets to choose how we're born, it's what we make of ourselves afterwards. ~ Kenneth Oppel

In economics, it is often professionally better to be associated with highly respectable error than uncertainly established truth. ~ John Kenneth Galbraith

Everything seems asleep, and yet going on all the time. It is a goodly life that you lead, friend; no doubt the best in the world, if only you are strong enough to lead it! ~ Kenneth Grahame

Irrelevant' Chris Fogle turns a page. Howard Cardwell turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page. 'Groovy' Bruce Channing attaches a form to a file. Ann Williams turns a page. Anand Singh turns two pages at once by mistake and turns one back which makes a slightly different sound. David Cusk turns a page. Sandra Pounder turns a page. Robert Atkins turns two separate pages of two separate files at the same time. Ken Wax turns a page. Lane Dean Jr. turns a page. Olive Borden turns a page. Chris Acquistipace turns a page. David Cusk turns a page. Rosellen Brown turns a page. Matt Redgate turns a page. R. Jarvis Brown turns a page. Ann Williams sniffs slightly and turns a page. Meredith Rand does something to a cuticle. 'Irrelevant' Chris Fogle turns a page. Ken Wax turns a page. Howard Cardwell turns a page. Kenneth 'Type of Thing' Hindle detaches a Memo 402-C(1) from a file. 'Second-Knuckle' Bob McKenzie looks up briefly while turning a page. David Cusk turns a page. A yawn proceeds across one Chalk's row by unconscious influence. Ryne Hobratschk turns a page. Latrice Theakston turns a page. Rotes Group Room 2 hushed and brightly lit, half a football field in length. Howard Cardwell shifts slightly in his chair and turns a page. Lane Dean Jr. traces his jaw's outline with his ring finger. Ed Shackleford turns a page. Elpidia Carter turns a page. Ken Wax attaches a Memo 20 to a file. Anand Singh turns a page. Jay Landauer and Ann Williams turn a page almost pr ~ David Foster Wallace

I went to Moscow and met some slightly powerful and scary people. ~ Kenneth Branagh

For Americans the contradiction between national ideal and social fact required explanation and correction. Ultimately this contradiction did not lead to the abandonment of the ideal of equal opportunity but rather to its postponement: to the notion of achieving for the next generation what could not be achieved for the current one. And the chief means to this end was a brilliant American invention: universal, free, compulsory public education. This "solution" was especially important for children and families because it gave children a central role in achieving the national ideal. ~ Kenneth Keniston

Meditation is good for relaxation, and calming of the soul. Just pay attention to your life and you will always see the path your guide has for you. ~ Kenneth G. Ortiz

He was smart, but he had to be smarter. No points for second place. ~ Kenneth Eade

Rat was talking so seriously, he kept saying to himself mutinously, 'But it WAS fun, though! Awful fun!' and making strange suppressed noises inside him, k-i-ck-ck-ck, and poop-p-p, and other sounds resembling stifled snorts, or ~ Kenneth Grahame

The heart cannot rejoice in that which the mind rejects ~ Kenneth D. Boa

Westerners have aggressive problem-solving minds; Africans experience people. ~ Kenneth Kaunda

Theodore Dalrymple is a brilliant observer of both medicine and society, and his book wittily engages with two versions of the current nonsense: orthodox medicine on drug addiction, and romantic poets on the wisdom you supposedly enjoy from getting high. ~ Kenneth Minogue

The most exciting thing for all of us is movies and movie stars. ~ Kenneth Edmonds

The right to have children should be a marketable commodity, bought and traded by individuals but absolutely limited by the state. ~ Kenneth E. Boulding

I believe there is something on this earth that you desire more than anything, and it isn't me. ~ Kenneth Oppel

Hamlet and Victor Frankenstein are each obsessed with death. Hamlet's whole story is a philosophical preparation for death; Victor's is an intellectual refusal to accept it. ~ Kenneth Branagh