Beats Quotes

“I'd learned myself by the age of sixteen that just as girls guarded their virginity, boys guarded something less tangible which they called Themselves.”
― Joyce Johnson, Minor Characters: A Beat Memoir

“I am all men and so I am
Fully implicated in all men’s crimes.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“All we know is that everything is alive otherwise it wouldn't be here—The rest is speculation, mental judgments of the reality of the feeling of a good or bad, this or that, nobody knows the holy white truth because it is invisible—

All the saints have gone to the grave with the same pout as the murderer and the hater, the dirt doesn't discriminate, it’ll eat all lips no matter what they did and that’s because nothing matters and we all know it—

But what we gonna do?”
― Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels

“Why else should we live but to discuss (at least) the horror and the terror of all this life, God how old we get and some of us go mad and everything changes viciously—it’s that vicious change that hurts, as soon as something is cool and complete it fall apart and burns—”
― Jack Kerouac, Desolation Angels

“You've got this, chief conductor of the brainwaves! Tune those thoughts like a radio station, and if the ego starts acting up, just hit "skip" like a sassy DJ. We're spinning a mixtape of wit and wisdom, dropping beats of self-control like a pro! So, let's jam to the rhythm of our own greatness and show the world how we remix life in style!”
― lifeispositive.com

“I have found Lorca’s grave / And I... am crawling... in.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“I was about to be swallowed / By my mother's womb— / Where I might enjoy again / The perfect solitude of death.”
― Rick Klaus Theis

“[A]ll things pass away / And, so, as we yet remain, / We must take our chances / While we may.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“Death is just a hapless, / Derelict alcoholic / Wandering the labyrinthine / Streets of time, / Tracing arbitrary, Impotent lines / That cannot contain / An infinite soul / To a finite time.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“Maybe that’s what death is—
When our curiosity
Gets the better of us
And is finally fully satisfied
When we take that last big leap
Off the edge of our lives,
Foregoing our present reality,
Undermining our seeming immortality,
Undertaking the fatal freefall
Of understanding all,
Momentarily seeing clearly,
Comprehending completely,
Realizing thoroughly and literally
That everything
Is nothing After all.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“We, too, are beings
Loitering until dispatched—
The eggs of ghosts
Waiting to hatch.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“Time is relative, so
There’s no time left to live.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“All brace to taste life’s bitter curse—
A second birth, but in reverse—
A return to the cold, hard womb of earth.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“Dove-white dawn illumes life’s worth
As mourners load crow-black hearse
To feed remains to hungry dirt.
From nothing to nothing, from dust to dust.
Life delays, then betrays;
It is death alone that we can trust.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“Craving immortality, my mind masters fraud:
My spirit’s projected as my brain cells applaud.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Man, thou art lust and unto lust
Thou has returned.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“[I]t is said,
“Patience is a virtue.”
But I know, instead,
Patience is a vulture,
Made up of time,
Picking at my spine.
Pick, tick...
Pick, tick...
Pick, tick...
Die.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“I am a criminal for just existing
When I know that any crime
Is being committed anywhere—
Not crimes against law,
But real crimes against
JUSTICE, PEACE, LIFE.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“[W]hat we think is real is only
a mind virus of synthetic words, quite empty,
and ready to fall like a house of cards
at the slightest provocation,
the slightest exploration.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“Possessions are the weights on our chains,
designating us indentured servants in this game,
as time-saving devices erase time all the same—”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“Smoking factories are the only real life here.
Living human corpses form their precious fuel—
fools ruled by more greedy, more ruthless fools.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“[W]e ourselves are
the skeletons who scare us,
faux grownups who could never care for us,
left alone to watch in terror as all life is extinguished again.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“[T]he fine line between life and death, we finally find, is no line at all.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“tick... tock... tick... tock…
this mocking by clocks
never stops,
until it does—
and then we rot.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“And, so, the poet who sees deepest
Is rooted out quickest—before he can
Infect the masses with his utopian visions,
Slay their despair, ease their burdens,
Restore their hopes, unleash their dreams.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“The poet floats above—
Stateless, ageless, timeless, guileless—
A creator of beauty,
An excavator of truth,
A healer of fear,
A harbinger of love.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“[T]errorism is a godsend to the State,
Allowing it to follow its natural tendency
To move away from democracy.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“at the end of the tunnel—
not light, just night.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“I was about to be swallowed
By my mother's womb—
Where I might enjoy again
The perfect solitude of death.”
― Rick Klaus Theis, Lorca's Grave

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes ‘Awww!”
― Jack Kerouac