# Jim Morrison

James Douglas Morrison (8 December 1943 – 3 July 1971) was an American singer, songwriter, musician, poet and founding member of The Doors.

## Quotes

* You know the day destroys the night, Night divides the day, Tried to run — Tried to hide — Break on through to the other side!
** "Break on Through (To The Other Side)" from The Doors (1967)
* We chased our pleasures here, Dug our treasures there, But can you still recall The time we cried? Break on through to the other side!
** "Break on Through (To The Other Side)" from The Doors
* It hurts to set you free, but you’ll never follow me.
** "The End" from The Doors (1967)
** Always a playground instructor, never a killer running to two young girls freedom and enterprize
* People are strange when you're a stranger Faces look ugly when you're alone Women seem wicked when you're unwanted Streets are uneven when you're down.
** "People Are Strange" on the album Strange Days (1967)
* When you're strange Faces come out of the rain When you're strange No one remembers your name When you're strange.
** "People Are Strange" on the album Strange Days (1967)
* Five to one, baby One in five No one here gets out alive, now You get yours, baby I'll get mine Gonna make it, baby If we try.
** "Five to One" on the album Waiting for the Sun (1968)
* The old get older And the young get stronger May take a week And it may take longer They got the guns But we got the numbers Gonna win, yeah We're takin' over Come on!
** "Five to One" on the album Waiting for the Sun (1968)
* Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name? Hello, I love you, let me jump in your game.
** "Hello, I Love You", 1968
* Take an Indian home to lunch.
** When asked how the USA should celebrate the Bicentennial, as quoted in Avant Garde magazine (March 1968)
* The future's uncertain and the end is always near
** "Roadhouse Blues", on the album Morrison Hotel (1970)
* At first flash of Eden, We race down to the sea. Standing there on Freedom's shore. Waiting for the sun...
** "Waiting for the Sun", on Morrison Hotel (1970)
* This is the strangest life I’ve ever known.
** "Waiting for the Sun"
* There's a killer on the road His brain is squirming like a toad.
** "Riders on the Storm" from the album L.A. Woman (1971).
* Listen to this, and I'll tell you 'bout the heartache I'll tell you 'bout the heartache and the loss of God.
** "The Wasp (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)" on the albums L. A. Woman (1971) and An American Prayer (1978)
* I'll tell you this — No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn.
** "The Wasp (Texas Radio And The Big Beat)" on the albums L. A. Woman (1971) and An American Prayer (1978)
* Mute nostril agony.
** "Horse Latitudes"
* Don't let me die in an automobile I wanna lie in an open field Want the snakes to suck my skin Want the worms to be my friends Want the birds to eat my eyes As here I lie The clouds fly by
** "The End; Live in New York" (1970), "The End; Live at The Hollywood Bowl" (1968)
* Alright listen man, we got a special treat for you now. This is a little tour-de-force that we've only done a couple times in front of strangers, and it starts off kinda quiet, so if everybody just kinda relax, take a few deep breaths, think about your eventual end and what's gonna happen tonight; and we'll try and do something good to your head, right man? I don't know if you're aware of it, but this whole evening is being taped for eternity and beyond that too. And so listen man, if you want to be represented in eternity with some uncouth language then I hope you'll stand up on the top of your seat and shout it out very clearly or we're not going to get it on tape. Don't worry, the operation won't take long and you'll feel much better in the morning.
** Onstage introduction to The Celebration of the Lizard
* 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.
** As quoted in Straight Whisky: A Living History of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll on the Sunset Strip (2003), by Erik Quisling, and Austin Lowry Williams p. 152
* 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.
** As quoted in When You're Strange (2009) by Tom Dicillo
* 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. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.
** As quoted in Jim Morrison: Ten Years Gone (1981) by Lizzie James writing for Creem Magazine

### The Lords and the New Creatures: Poems (1969)
#### The Lords: Notes on Vision

* Yoga powers. To make oneself invisible or small. To become gigantic and reach to the farthest things. To change the course of nature. To place oneself anywhere in space or time. To summon the dead. To exalt senses and perceive inaccessible images, of events on other worlds, in one's deepest inner mind, or in the minds of others.
* (Windows work two ways, mirrors one way.) You never walk through mirrors or swim through windows.
* The world becomes an apparently infinite, yet possibly finite, card game. Image combinations, permutations, comprise the world game.
* Cinema has evolved in two paths. One is spectacle. Like the phantasmagoria, its goal is the creation of a total substitute sensory world. The other is peep show, which claims for its realm both the erotic and the untampered observance of real life, and imitates the keyhole or voyeur's window without need of color, noise, grandeur.
* The subject says "I see first lots of things which dance — then everything becomes gradually connected".
* Few would defend a small view of Alchemy as "Mother of Chemistry", and confuse its true goal with those external metal arts. Alchemy is an erotic science, involved in buried aspects of reality, aimed at purifying and transforming all being and matter. Not to suggest that material operations are ever abandoned. The adept holds to both the mystical and physical work.
* They can picture love affairs of chemicals and stars, a romance of stones, or the fertility of fire. Strange, fertile correspondences the alchemists sensed in unlikely orders of being. Between men and planets, plants and gestures, words and weather.
* 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.
* The Lords. Events take place beyond our knowledge or control. Our lives are lived for us. We can only try to enslave others. But gradually, special perceptions are being developed. The idea of the "Lords" is beginning to form in some minds. We should enlist them into bands of perceivers to tour the labyrinth during their mysterious nocturnal appearances. The Lords have secret entrances and they know disguises. But they give themselves away in minor ways. Too much glint of light in the eye. A wrong gesture. Too long and curious a glance.
* More or less, we're all afflicted with the psychology of the voyeur. Not in a strictly clinical or criminal sense, but in our whole physical and emotional stance before the world. Whenever we seek to break this spell of passivity, our actions are cruel and awkward and generally obscene, like an invalid who has forgotten to walk.

#### The New Creatures

* I can't believe this is happening I can't believe all these people are sniffing each other & backing away teeth grinning hair raised, growling, here in the slaughtered wind
* Do you dare deny my potency my kindness or forgiveness?
* Camel caravans bear witness guns to Caesar. Hordes crawl and seep inside the walls. The streets flow stone. Life goes on absorbing war. Violence kills the temple of no sex.
* Cool pools from a tired land sink now in the peace of evening Clouds weaken and die. The sun, an orange skull, whispers quietly, becomes an island, & is gone. There they are watching us everything will be dark. The light changed. We were aware knee-deep in the fluttering air as the ships move on trains in their wake.
* This is it no more fun the death of all joy has come.

### An American Prayer (1978)

* Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind. Me and my mother and father, and a grandmother and a grandfather. were driving through the desert, at dawn, and a truck load of Indian workers had either hit another car, or just — I don't know what happened — but there were Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death. So the car pulls up and stops. That was the first time I tasted fear. I musta' been about four — like a child is like a flower, his head is just floating in the breeze, man. The reaction I get now thinking about it, looking back — is that the souls of the ghosts of those dead Indians... maybe one or two of 'em... were just running around freaking out, and just leaped into my soul. And they're still there.
* 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?
* Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests
* Now listen to this... Ill tell you about texas radio and the big beat Soft driven, slow and mad Like some new language Reaching your head with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god Wandering, wandering in hopeless night Out here in the perimeter there are no stars... Out here we is stoned... Immaculate.
* O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives The moths & atheists are doubly divine & dying We live, we die and death not ends it
* I touched her thigh and death smiled
* We have assembled inside this ancient & insane theatre To propagate our lust for life & flee the swarming wisdom of the streets
* Resident mockery give us an hour for magic
* I'm sick of dour faces Staring at me from the T.V. Tower. I want roses in my garden bower; dig?
* Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claws
* I will not go Prefer a feast of Friends To the Giant family
* The program for this evening is not new. You have seen This entertainment through and through. You've seen your birth, your life and death; you might recall all of the rest — (did you have a good world when you died?) — enough to base a movie on?
* They're making a joke of our universe
* Do you know freedom exists in a school book Did you know madmen are running our prisons Within a jail Within a gaol Within a white free protestant maelstrom We're perched headlong on the edge of boredom We're reaching for death on the end of a candle We're trying for something that's already found us.
* Always a playground instructor, never a Killer
* Her cunt gripped him like a warm friendly hand.
* Indian, Indian what did you die for? Indian says, nothing at all.
* Lying on stained wretched sheets with the bleeding virgin, we could plan a murder...or start a religion.

## Misattributed

* You know that it would be untrue You know that I would be a liar If I was to say to you Girl, we couldn't get much higher. Come on baby, light my fire — Come on baby, light my fire — Try to set the night on fire.
** "Light My Fire" (1967). Because Jim Morrison sang this as a breakthrough hit for The Doors and was the group's primary songwriter, this is often mistakenly thought to have been written by him. It was actually written by guitarist Robby Krieger, as were some other songs including "Love Her Madly," "You're Lost Little Girl" and "Touch Me" (as well as some other songs on the Soft Parade album). The second verse of the song, however, was written by Morrison.
* There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception.
** Aldous Huxley, using the term "the doors of perception" which originated with William Blake in The Marriage of Heaven and Hell. It is sometimes credited to Morrison because he cited it in interviews as the inspiration for the name The Doors and without always crediting Huxley as the source.

## Quotes about Morrison

* He was giving voice in a rock 'n' roll setting to the Oedipus complex, at the time a widely discussed tendency in Freudian psychology. He wasn't saying he wanted to do that to his own mom and dad. He was re-enacting a bit of Greek drama. It was theatre!
** Ray Manzarek, formerly of The Doors, Fong-Torres, Ben (2006). The Doors. New York City: Hyperion. p. 61

## External links

* Encyclopedic article on Jim Morrison on Wikipedia
* Media related to Jim Morrison on Wikimedia Commons
* Official Doors site
* The Doors | JIM MORRISON | The Doors Mythos