Artists have nothing to do with the deranged, vaguely connected actions of a few celebrated nutcases.
Tags: artists, connected, actions, nothing

Other Quotes by "Jim Carroll"

I do believe that a poet would possess a stronger intuitive sense of phrasing with a rock song. There is a way to tap into the emotions of an audience simply by the cross of a certain phrase, even a single word, against a certain chord.
Tags: emotions, way, believe, song
On a whim, he stopped and bought a watch from a sidewalk vendor. Normally, Billy could not abide keeping time, especially when it was attached to one’s body. Time was like a relentlessly needy lapdog one had to haul around. It barked too much and had no sense of loyalty.
Tags: time
all right buddah gets a backstage pass but all his friends have to pay
Tags: poetry
Poverty of young men alone behind the stairways, who practice alchemy inside bottle caps, who know the altruism of a last syringe.
Tags: sharing, poetry, needles, in-midtown-again, heroin, drugs
Poetry can unleash a terrible fear. I suppose it is the fear of possibilities, too many possibilities, each with its own endless set of variations. It's like looking too closely and too long into a mirror; soon your features distort, then erupt. You look too closely into your poems, or listen too closely to them as they arrive in whispers, and the features inside you - call it heart, call it mind, call it soul - accelerate out of control. They distort and they erupt, and it is one strange pain. You realize, then, that you can't attempt breaking down too many barriers in too short a time, because there are as many horrors waiting to get in at you as there are parts of yourself pushing to break out, and with the same, or more, fevered determination.
β€” Jim Carroll Forced Entries- The Downtown Diaries: 1971-1973
Tags: poetry
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