Quotes from Jack Kerouac

My witness is the empty sky.

No matter how you travel, how 'successful' your tour, or foreshortened, you always learn something and learn to change your thoughts.

I want a blaze of light to flame in me forever in a timeless, dear love of everything. And why should I pretend to want anything else?

It always makes me proud to love the world somehow- hate's so easy compared.

And the story of love is a long sad tale ending in graves.

I loved the way she said 'LA'; I love the way everybody says 'LA' on the Coast; it's their one and only golden town when all is said and done.

We agreed to love each other madly.

I petted the dogs who didn't argue with me ever. All dogs love God. They're wiser than their masters.

All my editors since Malcolm Cowley have had instructions to leave my prose exactly as I wrote it. In the days of Malcolm Cowley, with 'On the Road' and 'The Dharma Bums', I had no power to stand by my style for better or for worse.

The only truth is music.

Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child.

The truth of the matter is, you die, all you do is die, and yet you live, yes you live, and that's no Harvard lie.

Everything I wrote was true because I believed what I saw.

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

Eager for bread and love.

The only people for me are the mad ones: the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who... burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles.

I didn't know what to say. I felt like crying, Goddammit everybody in the world wants an explanation for your acts and for your very being.

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.

Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew.

It'll take you eternities to get rid of me,' she adds sadly, which makes me jealous, I want her to say I'll never get rid of her - I wanta be chased till eternity till I catch her.

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

I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren't people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.

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

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved . . . the ones who never yawn and say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.