Quotes from Jack Kerouac

The whole mad swirl of everything that was to come began then; it would mix up all my friends and all I had left of my family in a big dust cloud over the American Night.

I see the whole thing popping and parenthesizing in every direction, the story of that house and that kitchen.

FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

And here for the first time in my life I saw my beloved Mississippi River, dry in the summer haze, low water, with its big rank smell that smells like the raw body of America itself because it washes it up.

I was very rich now, a super myriad trillionaire in Samapatti transcendental graces, because of good humble karma, maybe because I had pitied the dog and forgiven men. But I knew now that I was a bliss heir, and that the final sin, the worst, is righteousness. So I would shut up and just hit the road and go see Japhy.

Qué será de nosotros cuando muramos?- Le pregunte en cierta ocasión. - Cuando uno se muere se muere, eso es todo - respondió.

history is best explained dramatically, because for God's sake nobody's going to tell me that massive Homeric war so to speak, between the Achaens and the Iliums was caused merely by some economic factor concerning trade...

Soon I'll find the right words, they'll be very simple.

I had nothing to offer anyone except my own confusion.

Un dolore mi trafisse il cuore, come succedeva ogni volta che vedevo una ragazza che mi piaceva andarsene in direzione opposta alla mia in questo mondo troppo grande.

Use the shadows of the born The shapes of the world And pass them before the light Of imagination's birthless ecstasy

Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running - that's the way to live.

Non lo so, non importa e non fa nessuna differenza.

I told you it was kicks. Everybody's kicks, man!

Since life is a dream I think I'll stop eating and drinking so much--do some ethereal daydreaming instead--go in the mansion of the mind and close all the doors, as if I was traveling in the back of a bus for 4 days & 4 nights, broke.

I am not 'I am' but just a spy in somebody's body.

When it is recognized that there is nothing beyond what is seen of the mind itself, the discrimination of being and non-being ceases and, as there is thus no external world as the object of perception, nothing remains but the solitude of Reality.

Nothing's alive for the universe is a dream already ended.

What are you going to do with yourself, Ed? I asked. I don't know, he said. I just go along. I dig life. He repeated it, following Dean's line. He had no direction. He sat reminiscing about that night in Chicago and the hot coffee cakes in the lonely room.

If he can be call'd meek who has no wishes --or hiding who needs never be found-- or scared who never attacks--- forgotten, who watches up the night--- If he can be called he, who has no self Writes One is All On every wall.

If you keep this up you'll both go crazy, but let me know what happens as you go along.

And for the first time in my life, the following afternoon, I went into the West.

Practice charity without holding in mind any conceptions about charity, for charity after all is just a word.

finally I went over to an old cook in the doorway of the kitchen and asked him "Why did Bodhidharma come from the West?" (Bodhidharma was the Indian who brought Buddhism eastward to China.) "I don't care," said the old cook, with lidded eyes, and I told Japhy and he said, "Perfect answer, absolutely perfect. Now you know what I mean by Zen.