Maynard James Keller

“You see, you just don't know
I'm here to give you my heart
And you want some fashion show”
― Jim Carroll

“I love this mansion, though it is too many windows
...to open halfway each morning
...to close halfway each night.”
― Jim Carroll

“It’s all as if words, phrases, images, syntax were small glass beads from a necklace which was wrenched from some neck and spilled on the floor and down the sides of sofa cushions and armchairs and under bookshelves and maybe swallowed by the cat. I’ve got to find all the glass pieces before I can even reorder the color sequence, and restring it and tie it tighter than before. There’s always a splendor in beginning all over. Even if it means getting on one’s knees to search beneath that bookshelf or prospecting through years of lint and ashes beneath those cushions. Even if it means breaking open that cat’s shit, which it conveniently has deposited in a plastic box, more orderly than any secretary could ever hope to be.

Then I’ll appreciate the value of each bead – rather, each word and image – that much more, never wasting another. And I will, I swear to myself, get it all back in time, string it all together, tighter, as I said, than before.”
― Jim Carroll, Forced Entries- The Downtown Diaries: 1971-1973

“Our memory is a more perfect world than the universe: it gives back life to those who no longer exist.”
― Guy de Maupassant