Quotes from Jack Kerouac

One night in a meditation vision Avalokitesvara the Hearer and Answerer of Prayer said to me 'You are empowered to remind people that they are utterly free' so I laid my hand on myself to remind myself first and then felt gay, yelled 'Ta,' opened my eyes, and a shooting star shot.

Memories and dreams are intermixed in this mad universe

Todo el interior de unas vidas interminables y sin final que es vacío. Lastimosas formas de ignorancia.

We got off the bus at Main Street, which was no different from where you get off a bus in Kansas City or Chicago or Boston—red brick, dirty, characters drifting by, trolleys grating in the hopeless dawn, the whorey smell of a big city.

I waded in the water and dunked a little and stood looking up at the splendorous night sky, Avalokitesvara's ten-wondered universe of dark and diamonds.

Like the ants that have nothing to do but dig all day, I have nothing to do but do what I want and be kind and remain nevertheless uninfluenced by imaginary judgments and pray for the light.

He wasn't drunk on liquor, just drunk on what he liked—crowds of people milling.

But what's all this giving of ourselves, what's there to give that'll help anybody

He began to learn Yes! to everything, just like Dean at this time, and hasn't stopped since.

Out we jumped in the warm, mad night, hearing a wild tenorman's bawling horns across the way going, ee-YAH, ee-YAH, and hands clapping to the beat and folks yelling go, go, go. And far from escorting the girls into the place, Dean Moriarty was already racing across the street with his huge bandaged thumb in the air yelling, BLOW, MAN, BLOW!

the cause of death is birth or procreation

now began to see they were going to stick and I was going to be left alone on my butt at the other end of the continent. But why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?

When you write about the Banana King you write about the human-interest things of life." I told him I didn't give a damn about the Banana King. "Until you learn to realize the importance of the Banana King you will know absolutely nothing about the human-interest things of the world," said Remi emphatically.

For a moment it was no different from being in Newark, except for the great hugeness outside that I loved so much.

He said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York.

Chad is a slim blond boy with a strange witch-doctor face that goes with his interest in anthropology and prehistory Indians, His nose beaks softly and almost creamily under a golden flare of hair; he has the beauty and grace of a Western hotshot who's danced in roadhouses and played a little football. A quavering twang comes out when he speaks.

We were standing outside on the great steps of the hall high above the blue waters of San Francisco Bay, and they were there, the white ships on the tide, and all my love rose to sing my newfound seaman's life. -- The Sea! Real ships! My sweet ship had come in, no dream but true with tangled rigging and actual shipmates and the job slip secure in my wallet and only the night before I'd been kicking cockroaches in my tiny dark room in 3rd Street slums.

I settled down to long sweet sleeps, day-long meditations in the house, writing, and long walks around beloved old Manhattan a half hour subway ride away. I roamed the streets, the bridges, Times Square, cafeterias, the waterfront, I looked up all my poet beatnik friends and roamed with them, I had love affairs with girls in the Village, I did everything with that great mad joy you get when you return to New York City.

and only because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere

I made love to her in the sweetness of the weary morning.

Non è forse vero che si comincia a vivere da bambini innocenti che credono a tutto quello che succede sotto il tetto paterno? Poi arriva il giorno dei Laodicei, quando si capisce di essere sfiniti e infelici e poveri e ciechi e nudi, e con facce da spettri orridi e dolenti ci si incammina rabbrividendo lungo il sentiero da incubo della vita.

The most religious moments of American life are undergone on Saturday nights.

Diamo e prendiamo e penetriamo in dolcezze incredibilmente complicate andando a zig zag da qualsiasi parte.

The blue sky adds Dont call me eternity, call me God if you like, sll of you talkers are in paradise: the leaf is paradise, the tree stump is paradise, the paper bag is paradise, the man is paradise, the sand is paradise, the sea is paradise, the man is paradise, the fog is paradise