Jim Carroll Quotes

• Conscience is no more than the dead speaking to us.

  Jim Carroll

  Conscience

  Jim Carroll (1998). “Void of course: poems 1994-1997”, Penguin Group USA

  59 Copy quote

• It was a dream, not a nightmare, a beautiful dream I could never imagine in a thousand nods. There was a girl next to me who wasn't beautiful until she smiled and I felt that smile come at me in heat waves following, soaking through my body and out my finger tips in shafts of color and I knew somewhere in the world, somewhere, that there was love for me.

  Jim Carroll

  Beautiful, Girl, Dream

  48 Copy quote

• I'll Die For Your Sins If You Live For mine.

  Jim Carroll

  Sin, Mines, Dies

  40 Copy quote

• You see, you just don't know I'm here to give you my heart And you want some fashion show

  Jim Carroll

  Fashion, Heart, Giving

  Song: It's Too Late

  38 Copy quote

• My voice has a quiver/ A quiver is where you keep arrows until you shoot them.

  Jim Carroll

  Voice, Arrows, Quiver

  "Void of Course". Book by Jim Carroll, www.theguardian.com. October 1998.

  33 Copy quote

• Little kids shoot marbles where the branches break the sun into graceful shafts of light… I just want to be pure.

  Jim Carroll

  Kids, Light, Branches

  Jim Carroll (1978). “The Basketball Diaries: Age 12-15”

  28 Copy quote

• 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.

  Jim Carroll

  Loyalty, Watches, Body

  Jim Carroll (2010). “The Petting Zoo: A Novel”, p.25, Penguin

  41 Copy quote

• I was a Catholic boy, redeemed through pain, not through joy.

  Jim Carroll

  Pain, Boys, Joy

  Song: Catholic Boy

  27 Copy quote

• Violence is so terribly fast . . . the most perverse thing about the movies is the way they portray it in slow motion, allowing it to be something sensuous . . . the viewer's lips slightly wet as the scene plays out. Violence is nothing like that. It is lightning fast, chaotic, and totally intangible.

  Jim Carroll

  Play, Lightning, Way

  32 Copy quote

• You're growing up. And rain sort of remains on the branches of a tree that will someday rule the Earth. And it's good that there is rain. It clears the month of your sorry rainbow expressions, and it clears the streets of the silent armies... so we can dance.

  Jim Carroll

  Growing Up, Sorry, Rain

  Jim Carroll (1993). “Fear of Dreaming: The Selected Poems of Jim Carroll”, Penguin Group USA

  33 Copy quote

• Whiteness is the color of death, you know, not black. Wetness is life, the breeder and shaper of life. In the beginning the sun was black. So all light was absorbed before it had a chance to return. And our dreams, then, were empty.

  Jim Carroll

  Dream, Light, Color

  31 Copy quote

• It's too late to fall in love with Sharon Tate / But it's too soon to ask me for the words I want carved on my tomb.

  Jim Carroll

  Falling In Love, Too Late, Want

  Song: It's Too Late

  26 Copy quote

• I love this mansion, though it is too many windows ...to open halfway each morning ...to close halfway each night.

  Jim Carroll

  Morning, Night, Window

  Jim Carroll (1993). “Fear of Dreaming: The Selected Poems of Jim Carroll”, Penguin Group USA

  19 Copy quote

• all right buddah gets a backstage pass but all his friends have to pay

  Jim Carroll

  Pay

  12 Copy quote

• Our team is good at getting dressed real quick, because we're the type of team that wears their uniforms all day.

  Jim Carroll

  Real, Team, Uniforms

  Jim Carroll (1978). “The Basketball Diaries: Age 12-15”

  11 Copy quote

• If you are a parent, if you are an educator, there are very many good and powerful reasons to take children onto the Internet, but you have to be involved with them-you cannot expect government authorities or industry authorities or other people to do your job for you, and that is to help guard your children against some of these things that are occurring out there.

  Jim Carroll

  Jobs, Powerful, Children

  16 Copy quote

• Billy was fascinated by the television. At its most basic level, it occupied his time and shut out the demons of isolation. This was another irony because, for so long, he had shunned the tube for a similar purpose-to prevent it from bombarding his brain with demons of banality. However, each time he turned the machine on, he began to discover a world of assorted delights, as well as gain insight into the insidious manner in which this medium was shaping the mass psyche. If nothing else, he learned there was nothing innocuous about it.

  Jim Carroll

  Long, Brain, Purpose

  Jim Carroll (2010). “The Petting Zoo: A Novel”, p.176, Penguin

  18 Copy quote

• There are times when the vehicle is in the ready mode, there are no indications externally that the vehicle can move and yet if someone accidentally hits the pedal, say when someone's inside, the car will move.

  Jim Carroll

  Moving, Car, Pedals

  11 Copy quote

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