Quotes from Jack Kerouac

Who has believed in the world and died with its name on his lips?

But no matter, the road is life.

But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.

God who is everything possesses the eye of awakening, like dreaming a long dream of an impossible task.

besides which Lucille would never understand me because I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land but the newspapers preen in virtue - Throughout the world the left & right the east & west, are both vicious

Old Dean's gone, I thought, and out loud I said, He'll be all right. And off we went to the sad and disinclined concert for which I had no stomach and all the time I was thinking of Dean and how he got back on the train and rode over three thousand miles over that awful land and never knew why he had come anyway, except to see me.

It was like the imminent arrival of Gargantuan preparations had to be made to widen the gutters of Denver and foreshorten certain laws to fit his suffering bulk and bursting ecstasies.

I go to bed with horror on my wings. In my pillow is sad comforts. Like my mother says, 'On essaye a s'y prendre, pi sa travaille pas' (We try to manage, and it turns out shit).

As we rode in the bus in the weird phosphorescent void of the Lincoln Tunnel we leaned on each other with fingers waving and yelled and talked excitedly, and I was beginning to get the bug like Dean.

Not only was there no traffic but the rain came down in buckets and I had no shelter. I had to run under some pines to take cover; this did no good; I began crying and swearing and socking myself on the head for being such a damn fool.

This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do.

To this boy of New England the May morning was like faint music in the woods again, some unspeakably exciting foregathering of events far in the deep shade of morning pines, all of it stirring there. He could hear it all faintly in the woods from far away, from across the fields and pastures, in the cool misty morning air, and he wanted to go there too.

I dunno, remember when we were in East St. Louis with George, and Jack you said you'd love those beautiful dancing girls if you knew they would live forever as beautiful as they are? (p. 173)

Don't you have a class this morning, Georgie?" Day mumbled something that sounded like "Ancient History of the Near East and Greece." "Poof!" scoffed Everhart, flourishing his fork, "Come with me and see the Near East.

You know women," confided the fruitseller, "they love little cats... they always love the helpless things. But when it comes to men, you know, they'll want them cruel." The youth stranger smiled thinly. "Am I right?" laughed the man, slapping the youth on the back and reentering his store with the kitten, chuckling to himself. "Maybe so," mumbled the youth to himself. "How the hell should I know?

He] seemed at home and content now they were sailing, as though leaving the port meant the cessation of all his worries, and heading out to sea a new era of peace and amenity.

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.

clichés are truisms and all truisms are true)—On

I was getting drunk and didn't care; everything was fine

The world was upsidedown hanging in an ocean of endless space and here were all these people sitting in theatres watching movies

As for all your latest Mayan discoveries and poems, I want to hear every word of it if you want to transmit it, or tell it when we meet, but don't expect me to get excited by anything anymore.

On the wall hung a picture of an ugly old Cape Cod house. His friends said, 'Why do you have that ugly thing hanging there?' and Bull said, 'I like it because it's ugly.

The bottom of the world is gold and the world is upside down.