A Quote by Richie Havens

We had been reading about these beatniks who hung out or lived in Greenwich Village, and we wanted to find out what a 'beatnik' was, and so a friend and I went right to the source. What we learned, of course, was that beatniks were mostly artists.

Richie Havens

Quote Topics

About Artists Beatnik Been Course Find Friend Greenwich Greenwich Village Had Hung Learned Lived Mostly Out Reading Right Source Village Wanted Were

Quote Author

Richie Havens
American - Musician
January 21, 1941 - April 22, 2013

It took us a long time to find out that we had been lied to by our parents' generation. The moralities that were followed during our parents' generation were basically arbitrary. This caused a rift between the two generations, which was brought on by the beatniks

Peter Fonda

I got treated very badly in Texas. They don't treat beatniks too good in Texas. Port Arthur people thought I was a beatnik, though they'd never seen one and neither had I.

Janis Joplin

I wanted to open up a stand to sell dried fruit and beef jerky where we lived in Greenwich Village. I was 8 years old. I had been flipping through TV channels and got mesmerized by this infomercial for a food dehydrator.

Neil Blumenthal

I had wanted to come back to Greenwich Village ever since I had left Waverly Place, and since moving to West Eleventh Street, I have never lived anyplace else. I do not want to. That is not because of what the Village is but because of what I have made it, and what I have made it depends on who I am at the time.

Mary Cantwell

My father took me back home, back to Greenwich Village, and he thought by taking me out of the orphanage he'd be out of the World War too. But no way - they got him anyway. He went in the Navy and then I lived on the streets.

Gregory Corso

Celebrated in the Bob Dylan ballad “Joey”, Crazy Joe Gallo was a charismatic beatnik gangster whose forays into Greenwich Village in the 1960s inspired his bloody revolution against the Mafia.

Tom Folsom

Now, twenty years old, I come out and I go back to Greenwich Village. Now, of course, I'm a wealthy man.

Gregory Corso

When I was 18, I lived in Greenwich Village, New York, for nine months. At that time, I wanted to change the world, not through architecture, but through painting. I lived the artist's life, mingling with poets and writers, and working as a waiter. I was intrigued by the aliveness of the city.

Christian de Portzamparc

My art teacher in junior high was a very out gay man and a mentor to me. He would tell us about Greenwich Village and show us the 'Village Voice' and describe his life, but it was all sort of subversive and below the radar.

Gus Van Sant

I always got a kick out of it when they called it the California Sound because it really came out of Liverpool and Greenwich Village.

Roger McGuinn

My style of performance poetry came from the beatniks, Allen Ginsberg.

Patti Smith

I went through different looks. At one period, I was preppy because that's how I grew up. But then I had bleached hair in the front. And I used to wear - then I wanted to be a beatnik. It was hard to be a beatnik in suburban Baltimore. But I wanted to be one.

John Waters

From Dickens's cockneys to Salinger's phonies, from Kerouac's beatniks to Cheech and Chong's freaks, and on to hip hop's homies, dialect has always been used as a way for generations to distinguish themselves.