Quotes from Jack Kerouac

Comparisons are odious, Smith

Quando lo trovai a Mill City quella mattina era piombato in uno di quei periodi depressi e infernali che arrivano ai giovanotti sui venticinque.

Newton, Iowa, it was, where I'd taken that dawn walk in 1947. In the afternoon we crossed drowsy old Davenport again and the low-lying Mississippi in her sawdust bed; then Rock Island, a few minutes of traffic, the sun reddening, and sudden sights of lovely little tributary rivers flowing softly among the magic trees and greeneries of mid-American Illinois. It was beginning to look like the soft sweet East again; the great dry West was accomplished and done.

the little boy somehow thumped his foot just at the moment of drowse, to instantly wake me up, wide awake, back to my horror which when all is said and done is the horror of all the worlds the showing of it to me being damn well what I deserve anyway with my previous blithe yakkings about the sufferings of others in books. Books, shmooks, this sickness has got me wishing if I can ever get out of this I'll gladly become a millworker and shut my big mouth.

the mother watched from her sunny doorway, and we slowly bounced back to town. But now the bouncing was no longer unpleasant; it was the most pleasant and graceful billowy trip in the world, as over a blue sea, and Dean's face was suffused with an unnatural glow that was like gold as he told us to understand the springs of the car now for the first time and dig the ride. Up and down we bounced, and even Victor understood and laughed.

Pauline hiçbir zaman anlamayacakt? beni, çünkü ilgimi çeken çok fazla ÅŸey vard? ve geberinceye kadar birinden ötekine koÅŸacakt?m. Kendi kafa kar???kl???mdan baÅŸka bir ÅŸey sunamazd?m kimseye.

Billie offers to dig the garbage pit but does so by digging a neat tiny coffinshaped grave instead of just a garbage hole—Even Dave Wain blinks to see it—It's exactly the size fit for putting a little dead Elliott in it, Dave is thinking the same thing I am I can tell by a glance he gives me—We've all read Freud sufficiently to understand something there

The mere thought of looking out the window at Mexico—which was now something else in my mind—was like recoiling from some gloriously riddled glittering treasure-box that you're afraid to look at because of your eyes, they bend inward, the riches and the treasures are too much to take all at once.

in search of something they don't really find, and losing themselves on the road, and coming all the way back hopeful of something else.

Sentí una punzada en el corazón, como me pasaba cada vez que veía que una chica que me gustaba y yo nos dirigíamos a puntos opuestos de este mundo demasiado grande.

riding freights, working as a scullion in the railroad cookshacks, stumbling, down-crashing in wino alley nights, expiring on coal piles, dropping his yellowed teeth one by one in the gutters of the West.

Japhy, do you think God made the world to amuse himself because he was bored? Because if so he would have to be mean.

Ah back – Ah forth— Ah shish – Boom, away, doom, a day – Vein we— firm – The sea is We Parle, parle, boom the earth –Aree –Shaw, Sho, Shoosh, flut, ravad, tapavada pow, coof, loof, roof, — No, no, no, no, no, no— Oh ya, ya, ya, yo, yair— Shhh— ('SEA' Sounds of the Pacific Ocean at Big Sur)

Whither goes thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?

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.

Look at that party the other night. Everybody wanted to have a good time and tried real hard but we all woke up the next day feeling sorta sad and separate. What do you think about death, Ray?

soft love and hope and anybody who's never done this is crazy—Because a new love affair always gives hope, the irrational mortal loneliness is always crowned

Monsanto will say "That's all there is to it, take it easy, everything's okay, dont take things too serious, it's bad enough as it is without you going the deep end over imaginary conceptions just like you always said yourself

As I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer.

Only sign we have now to know which way we're going, is ducks.

The prettiest girls live in Des Moines

His excitement blew out of his eyes in stabs of fiendish light. He rolled his neck in spastic ecstasy. He lisped, he writhed, he flopped, he moaned, he howled, he fell back in despair. He could hardly get a word out, he was so excited with life.

the reason being the enormous loneliness that differs just a shade and cut hair as you move across the Mississippi.

The secret of this kind of climbing," said Japhy, "is like Zen. Don't think. Just dance along. It's the easiest thing in the world, actually easier than walking on flat ground which is monotonous. The cute little problems present themselves at each step and yet you never hesitate and you find yourself on some other boulder you picked out for no special reason at all, just like Zen." Which it was. We didn't talk much now.