I see myself as an intelligent, sensitive human, with the soul of a clown which forces me to blow it at the most important moments.
Tell them you came, and saw, and looked into my eyes and saw the shadow of the guard receding. Thoughts in time and out of season, the hitchinker stood by the side of the road and levelled his thumb in the calm calculus of reason. [...] Why does my mind circle around you? Why do planets wonder what it would be like to be you? All your soft wild promises were words, birds, endlessly in flight.
We could plan a murder Or start a religion.
I like any reaction I can get with my music. Just anything to get people to think.
What have they done to the earth? What have they done to our fair sister? Ravaged and plundered and ripped her and bit her Stuck her with knives in the side of the dawn And tied her with fences and dragged her down
Music is your only friend until the end...
That’s what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is....Most people love you for who you pretend to be....To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretense...It’s true, we’re locked in an image, an act...
Being drunk is a good disguise. I drink so I can talk to assholes. This includes me.
I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos-especially activity that seems to have no meaning. It seems to me to be the road toward freedom... Rather than starting inside, I start outside and reach the mental through the physical.
There are images I need to complete my own reality.
Guileless and without vanity, we were still in love with ourselves then. We felt comfortable in our skins, enjoyed the news that our senses released to us, admired our dirt, cultivated our scars, and could not comprehend this unworthiness. Jealousy we understood and thought natural--a desire to have what somebody else had; but envy was a strange, new feeling for us.
A hero is someone who rebels or seems to rebel against the facts of existence and seems to conquer them. Obviously that can only work at moments. It can't be a lasting thing. That's not saying that people shouldn't keep trying to rebel against the facts of existence. Someday, who knows, we might conquer death, disease and war.
A moving or movement away from a station A waving away from a waving a motion Amazement a moment amazing a waving
Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality. I was curious to see what would happen. That's all it was curiosity.
In the beginning we were creating our music, ourselves, every night . . . starting with a few outlines, maybe a few words for a song. Sometimes we worked out in Venice, looking at the surf. We were together a lot and it was good times for all of us. Acid, sun, friends, the ocean, and poetry and music.
The gate is straight, Deep and wide, Break on through to the other side...
The grand highway is crowded w/lovers & searchers & leavers so eager to please & forget. Wilderness.
Where's your will to be weird?
When you make your peace with authority, you become authority.
Time to live, time to lie, time to laugh, and time to die. Take it easy baby. Take it as it comes.
Give form to the passing World. Freeways are a drama.
Love cannot save you from your own fate.
All the poems have wolves in them. All but one. The most beautiful one of all. She dances in a ring of fire and throws off the challenge with a shrug.
I think the highest and lowest points are the important ones. Anything else is just...in between.
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask.
We're reaching for death on the end of a candle We're trying for something that's already found us
Drugs are a bet with your mind.
Rather than starting inside, I start outside and reach the mental through the physical.
You live you die and death not ends it.
That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day! The day's divinity! First thing you see!!
The Night is young & full of rest I can’t describe the way she’s dress’d She’ll pander to some strange requests Anything that you suggest Anything to please her guest.
I think people resist freedom because they're afraid of the unknown. But it's ironic....That unknown was once very well known. It's where our souls belong....The only solution is to confront them - confront yourself - with the greatest fear imaginable. Expose yourself to your deepest fear. After that, fear has no power, and fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
This is the strangest life I've ever known.
Some people surrender their freedom willingly but others are forced to surrender it. Imprisonment begins with birth. Society, parents they refuse to allow you to keep the freedom you were born with. There are subtle ways to punish a person for daring to feel. You see that everyone around you has destroyed his true feeling nature. You imitate what you see.
Where are the feasts we were promised? Where is the wine, the new wine, dying on the vine.
Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding/Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind.
I believe in a long, prolonged, derangement of the senses in order to obtain the unknown.
People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that's bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they're afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It's all in how you carry it.
No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.
A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.
I am the Lizard King. I can do anything!
All our songs are about love, travel and death.
Sex is full of lies. The body tries to tell the truth. But, it's usually too battered with rules to be heard, and bound with pretenses so it can hardly move. We cripple ourselves with lies.
Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as ravens claws.
We fear violence less than our own feelings. Personal, private, solitary pain is more terrifying than what anyone else can inflict.
The world becomes an apparently infinite, yet possibly finite, card game. Image combinations, permutations, comprise the world game.
Take it easy baby, take it as it comes - specialize in having fun!
Most people love you for who you pretend to be.
Some of the worst mistakes of my life have been haircuts.
How can I set free anyone who doesn't have the guts to stand up alone and declare his own freedom?
I'm kind of hooked to the game of art and literature; my heroes are artists and writers.
We hide ourselves in our music to reveal ourselves
[...] My wild words slip into fusion and risk losing the solid ground. So stranger, get wilder still. Probe the highlands.
Getting drunk . . . you're in complete control up to a point. It's your choice, every time you take a sip. You have a lot of small choices. It's like . . . I guess it's the difference between suicide and slow capitulation . . .
The world we suggest is a new wild west. A sensuous evil world. Strange and haunting, the path of the sun.
You feel your strength in the experience of pain.
I want to have my kicks before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.
The time to hesitate is through.
Is everybody in?... Is everybody in?... Is everybody in? The ceremony is about to begin... The program for this evening is not new. You've seen this entertainment through and through. You've seen your birth, your life and death. You might recall all the rest. Did you have a good world when you died? Enough to base a movie on?
Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality...
There may be a time when we'll attend Weather Theaters to recall the sensation of rain.
The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are...There can't be any large-scale revolution until there's a personal revolution, on an individual level. It's got to happen inside first.
Another flashing chance at bliss Another kiss, another kiss
All our lives we sweat and save, Building for a shallow grave.
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel.
If my poetry aims to achieve anything, it's to deliver people from the limited ways in which they see and feel.
Each generation wants new symbols, new people, new names. They want to divorce themselves from their predecessors.
Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.
You cannot petition the lord with prayer!
Expose yourself to your deepest fear; after that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free.
No one here gets out alive.
Violence isn't always evil. What's evil is the infatuation with violence.
I wouldn't mind dying in a plane crash. It'd be a good way to go. I don't want to die in my sleep, or of old age, or OD... I want to feel what it's like. I want to taste it, hear it, smell it. Death is only going to happen to you once; I don't want to miss it
Music inflames temperament.
When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experience.
Do you know the warm progress under the stars? Do you know we exist? Have you forgotten the keys to the kingdom? Have you been born yet & are you alive?
The most loving parents and relatives commit murder with smiles on their faces. They force us to destroy the person we really are: a subtle kind of murder.
Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.
I like to let each thing happen - direct it a little consciously, maybe - but just kind of follow the vibrations I get in each particular circumstance. We don't plan theatrics. We hardly ever know which set we'll play.
Man, I'm sick of doubt.
How can I set free anyone who doesn't have the guts to stand up alone and declare his own freedom? I think it's a lie - people claim they want to be free - everybody insists that freedom is what they want the most, the most sacred and precious thing a man can possess. But that's bullshit! People are terrified to be set free - they hold on to their chains. They fight anyone who tries to break those chains. It's their securityHow can they expect me or anyone else to set them free if they don't really want to be free?
Nobody would stay interested in me if I was normal
I offer images-I conjure memories of freedom that can still be reached-like the Doors, right? But we can only open the doors-we can't drag people through.
I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps "Oh look at that!" Then - whoosh, and I'm gone... and they'll never see anything like it ever again... and they won't be able to forget me - ever.
Los Angeles is a city looking for a ritual to join its fragments, and The Doors are looking for such a ritual also. A kind of electric wedding. We hide ourselves in the music to reveal ourselves.
It may have been in pieces, but I gave you the best of me.
I am interested in anything about revolt, disorder, chaos, especially activity that seems to have no meaning.
Blood is the rose of mysterious union.
Do you know how pale & wanton thrillful comes death on a strange hour unannounced, unplanned for like a scaring over-friendly guest you've brought to bed Death makes angels of us all & gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claws
Listen, real poetry doesn't say anything; it just ticks off the possibilities. Opens all doors. You can walk through anyone that suits you.
No one thought up being. He who thinks he has, step forward.
Out here on the perimeter there are no stars. Out here we is stoned. Immaculate.
I like people who shake other people up and make them feel uncomfortable.
The future is uncertain but the end is always near.
I am troubled, immeasurably by your eyes. I am struck by the feather of your soft reply. The sound of glass speaks quick, disdain and conceals what your eyes fight to explain.
Twentieth-century culture's disease is the inability to feel their reality. People cluster to TV, soap operas, movies, theater, pop idols and they have wild emotion over symbols. But in the reality of their own lives, they're emotionally dead.
Death Makes Angels of us all.
the time to hesitate is through no time to wallowin the mire Try now we can only lose and our love become a funeral pyre
People are strange when you're a stranger.
Each day is a drive through history.
Windows work two ways, mirrors one way. You never walk through mirrors or swim through windows.
There are no laws, there are no rules, just grab your friend and love him.
Cinema, heir of alchemy, last of an erotic science.
That’s what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is....Most people love you for who you pretend to be....To keep their love, you keep pretending - performing. You get to love your pretense...It’s true, we’re locked in an image, an act - and the sad thing is, people get so used to their image - they grow attached to their masks. They love their chains. They forget all about who they really are. And if you try to remind them, they hate you for it - they feel like you’re trying to steal their most precious possession.
We are content in the 'given' in sensation's quest. We have been metamorphosised from a mad body dancing on hillsides to a pair of eyes staring in the dark.
I think that phrase is the most horrible phrase in the English language - 'I don't know.' It's terribly embarrassing.
Cancel my subscription to the resurrection.
People are terrified to be set free - they hold on to their chains. They fight anyone who tries to break those chains. It's their security... How can they expect me or anyone else to set them free if they don't really want to be free?
Maybe primitive people have less bullshit to let go of, to give up. A person has to be willing to give up everything—not just wealth. All the bullshit he's been taught—all society's brainwashing. You have to let go of all that to get to the other side. Most people aren't willing to do that.
I wonder why people like to believe I'm high all the time. I guess . . . maybe they think someone else can take their trip for them.
Blake said that the body was the soul's prison unless the five senses are fully developed and open. He considered the senses the 'windows of the soul.' When sex involves all the senses intensely, it can be like a mystical experence.
There are things known and things unknown and in between are The Doors.
Hatred is a very underestimated emotion.
I've noticed that when people are joking they're usually dead serious, and when they're serious, they're usually pretty funny.
A man searching for paradise lost can seem a fool to those who never sought the other world.
Give me songs to sing and emerald dreams to dream and I'll give you love unfolding.
Actually I don't remember being born, it must have happened during one of my black outs.
I think, in these days, especially in the States, you have to be a politician or an assassin or something, to really be a superstar.
There's nothing wrong with being a large mammal.
There's the know. And there's the unknown. And what separates the two is the door, and that's what i wanta be. Ahh wanna be th' dooooooooorrr...
People fear death even more than pain. It's strange that they fear death. Life hurts a lot more than death. At the point of death, the pain is over. Yeah, I guess it is a friend.
I've always thought comparisons were useless and ugly. It is a short cut to thinking.
Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they're wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain.
Cinema returns us to anima, religion of matter, which gives each thing its special divinity and sees gods in all things and beings. Cinema, heir of alchemy, last of an erotic science.
