I was always the young guy. And when you’re successful when you’re young, it leads to an arrested adolescence or something, y’know. Jim Carroll Read Quote
It’s easy to get by on a facade of fancy style, but sooner or later, people are going to see through it. I’m trying to be as honest as possible. Jim Carroll Read Quote
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… With basketball, you can correct your own mistakes, immediately and beautifully, in midair. Jim Carroll Read Quote
I was this Catholic kid, and I never really lost that. I loved the rituals of Catholicism. The mass is a magic ritual; it’s a transubstantiation, and the stations of the cross – I mean, a crown of thorns? Getting whipped? It’s punk rock. Jim Carroll Read Quote
I need a consistency of my moods if there is to be any consistency in my style. I can’t attempt to write always in the hollow flux of desperation and incipient terror. Jim Carroll Read Quote
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. Jim Carroll Read Quote
When I came back to New York, it was such a joke because I was always referred to as the pure young poet who wasn’t in it for what he could get out of it. And all of a sudden, the pure young poet comes back… and I’m hanging out with the Rolling Stones. Jim Carroll Read Quote
Artists have nothing to do with the deranged, vaguely connected actions of a few celebrated nutcases. Jim Carroll Read Quote
It’s always been the same, growing up in Manhattan… the idea of living within a giant archer’s target… for use by the bad Russia bowman with the atomic arrows. Jim Carroll Read Quote
When I was about 9 years old, man, I realized that the real thing was not only to do what you were doing totally great, but to look totally great while you were doing it. Jim Carroll Read Quote
