In Boston serpents whistle at the cold.

I’m sure that writing isn’t a craft, that is, something for which you learn the skills and go on turning out. It must come from some deep impulse, deep inspiration. That can’t be taught, it can’t be what you use in teaching.

Some morbidity in me attracts mosquitoes.

I want to apologize for plaguing you with so many telephone calls last November and December. When the ‘enthusiasm’ is coming on me it is accompanied by a feverish reaching out to my friends. After its over I wince and wither.

Sometimes nothing is so solid to me as writing – I suppose that’s what a vocation means – at times a torment, a bad conscience, but all in all, purpose and direction.

It’s a completely powerful and serious book, as good as anything in prose or poetry written by a ‘beat’ writer, and one of the most alive books written by any American for years. I don’t see how it could be considered immoral.

It’s the light of the oncoming train.

And blue-lung’d combers lumbered to the kill.

Pity the planet, all joy gone from this sweet volcanic cone; peace to our children when they fall in small war on the heel of small war – until the end of time to police the earth, a ghost orbiting forever lost in our monotonous sublime.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone in the city’s throat.