Quotes from Jack Kerouac

I liked him; not because he was a good sort, as he later proved to be, but because he was enthusiastic about things.

and nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old

I'm afraid that you'll never understand me fully, and because of that, sometimes you'll be frightened, disgusted, annoyed, or pleased.

And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhat far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded - at least that's what I thought then.

A poet is a blind optimist. The world is against him for many reasons. But the poet persists. He believes that he is on the right track, no matter what any of his fellow men say. In his eternal search for truth, the poet is alone. He tries to be timeless in a society built on time.

I nudged myself closer to the ledge and closed my eyes and thought 'Oh what a life this is, why do we have to be born in the first place, and only so we can have our poor gentle flesh laid out to such impossible horrors as huge mountains and rock and empty space,' and with horror I remembered the famous Zen saying, 'When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing.' The saying made my hair stand on end; it had been such cute poetry sitting on Alvah's straw mats.

Every night I still ask the Lord, Why? and havent heard a decent answer yet

The unspeakable visions of the individual.

Yeah, I said, but you're an artist. You don't believe in decency and honesty and gratitude. Where shall we eat?

Jesus was a strange hobo who walked on water—

The little flowers grew everywhere around the rocks, and no one had asked them to grow, or me to grow.

She loved that man madly, but in a delirious way of some kind; there was never any mooching and mincing around, just talk and a very deep companionship that none of us would ever be able to fathom.

I feel impossibly sad and like I'll die, what can we do?

Oh my God, sociability is just a big smile and a big smile is nothing but teeth, I wish I could just stay up here and rest and be kind. But somebody brought up some wine and that started me off.

He was alone in the doorway, digging the street. Bitterness, recriminations, advice, morality, sadness--everything was behind him, and ahead of him was the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being.

For the next week that was all I heard - manana, a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.

God was gone; it was the silence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere. I didn't know what was happening to me, and I suddenly realized it was only the tea that we were smoking; Dean had bought some in New York. It made me think that everything was about to arrive - the moment when you know all and everything is decided forever.

and the stars were icicles of mockery

You can't teach the old maestro a new tune.

I am going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.

I had traveled eight thousand miles around the American continent and I was back on Times Square; and right in the middle of a rush hour, too, seeing with my innocent road-eyes the absolute madness and fantastic hoorair of New York with its millions and millions hustling forever for a buck among themselves, the mad dream-grabbing, taking, giving, sighing, dying, just so they could be buried in those awful cemetery cities beyond Long Island City.

And I go home having lost her love. And write this book.

I can't think of anybody…who knows the sum and substance of what I know and feel and cry about in my secret self all the time when I don't feel strong, the sorrows of time and personality, and can therefore on all levels make it all the way with me

All I wanted and all Neal wanted and all anybody wanted was some kind of penetration into the heart of things where, like in a womb, we could curl up and sleep the ecstatic sleep that Burroughs was experiencing with a good big mainline shot of M. and advertising executives in NY were experiencing with twelve Scotch & Sodas in Stouffers before they made the drunkard's train to Westchester---but without hangovers.