Quotes from Jack Kerouac

The inside of the cabin with the fire finally going is still the dear lovable abode now as sharp in my mind as I look at it as an unusually well focused snapshot---The sprig of ferns still stands in a glass of water, the books are there, the neat groceries ranged along the wall shelves

Il mondo mi deve un paio di cose.

I'm a fool, the new day rises on the world and on my foolish life: I'm a fool, I loved the blue dawns over racetracks and made a bet Ioway was sweet like its name, my heart went out to lonely sounds in the misty springtime night of wild sweet America in her powers, the wetness on the wire fence bugled me to belief, I stood on sandpiles with an open soul, I not only accept loss forever, I am made of loss - I am made of Cody, too -

With frantic Dean I was rushing through the world without a chance to see it.

It was remarkable how Dean could go mad and then suddenly continue with his soul - which I think is wrapped up in a fast car, a coast to reach, and a woman at the end of the road - calmly and sanely as though nothing had happened.

I have finally taught Dean that he can do anything he wants, become mayor of Denver, marry a millionaires, or become the greatest poet since Rimbaud. But he keeps rushing out to see the midget auto races. I go with him.

Dean, ragged in a motheaten overcoat he brought specially for the freezing temperatures of the East, walked off alone, and the last I saw of him he rounded the corner of Seventh Avenue, eyes on the street ahead, and bent to it again. Poor little Laura, my baby, to whom I'd told everything about Dean, began almost to cry.

Tonight while walking on the waterfront in the angelic streets I suddenly wanted to tell you how wonderful I think you are. Please don't dislike me. What is the mystery of the world? Nobody knows they're angels.

Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.

But the mountains were mighty solemn, and so was Japhy, and for that matter so was I, and in fact laugher is solemn.

The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.

I started to cry. And I looked up and saw the bleak pines by the bleak mills of Roanoke Rapids with one final despair, like the despair of a man who has nothing left to do but leave the earth forever.

An art dies when it describes itself instead of life - when it turns from the expression of man's feelings in the void, to a mere description of the void.

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. ? Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop.

The floors of bus stations are the same all over the country, always covered with butts and spit and they give a feeling of sadness that only bus stations have.

You can't live in this world but there's no where else to go.

Trails are like that: you're floating along in a Shakespearean Arden paradise and expect to see nymphs and flute boys, then suddenly you're struggling in a hot broiling sun of hell in dust and nettles and poison oak…just like life.

I looked up at the sky; the pure, wonderful stars were still there, burning

Two keen minds that they are, they took to each other at the drop of a hat. Two piercing eyes glanced into two piercing eyes--the holy con-man with the shining mind, and the sorrowful poetic con-man with the dark mind that is Carlo Marx.

I'd also gone through an entire year of celibacy based on my feeling that lust was the direct cause of birth which was the direct cause of suffering and death and I had really no lie come to a point where I regarded lust as offensive and even cruel.

I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds.

It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow

As for his hobby, drawing, he was better at that than most artists alive today and I always knew he was really a great young artist pretending to be withdrawn so people would leave him alone, also so people wouldn't ask him to get a job.