“poetry readings have to be some of the saddestdamned things ever,the gathering of the clansmen and clanladies,week after week, month after month, yearafter year,getting old together,reading on to tiny gatherings,still hoping their genius will bediscovered,making tapes together, discs together,sweating for applausethey read basically to and foreach other,they can't find a New York publisheror onewithin miles,but they read on and onin the poetry holes of America,never daunted,never considering the possibility thattheir talent might bethin, almost invisible,they read on and onbefore their mothers, their sisters, their husbands,their wives, their friends, the other poetsand the handful of idiots who have wanderedinfrom nowhere. I am ashamed for them,I am ashamed that they have to bolster each other,I am ashamed for their lisping egos,their lack of guts. if these are our creators,please, please give me something else: a drunken plumber at a bowling alley,a prelim boy in a four rounder,a jock guiding his horse through along therail,a bartender on last call,a waitress pouring me a coffee,a drunk sleeping in a deserted doorway,a dog munching a dry bone,an elephant's fart in a circus tent,a 6 p.m. freeway crush,the mailman telling a dirty joke anythinganythingbut these.”

“To tell you the truth, I used to consider it a disgrace to be found ignorant by other people. But now, I find that I am not ashamed of knowing less than others, and I'm less inclined to force myself to read books. In short, I have grown old and decrepit.”

“I doubt if I shall ever have time to read the book again -- there are too many new ones coming out all the time which I want to read. Yet an old book has something for me which no new book can ever have -- for at every reading the memories and atmosphere of other readings come back and I am reading old years as well as an old book.”

“in the last month or so, i have read the great gatsby and a separate peace. i am starting to see a real trend in the kind of books bill gives me to read. and just like the tape of songs, it is amazing to hold each of them in the palm of my hand. they are all my favorites. all of them.”

“I am ashamed to say this, but as a child, neither my parents not my teachers pushed me to read. In fact, I did not read an entire book through until I was a grown man and had learned the awesome power of reading on my own.”

“If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read Satori in Paris lately? But if I had never read Jack Kerouac's horrendous poems, I never would have had the guts to write horrendous poems myself. I never would have signed up for Mrs. Safford's poetry class the spring of junior year, which led me to poetry readings, which introduced me to bad red wine, and after that it's all just one big blurry condemned path to journalism and San Francisco.”