Quotes from Jack Kerouac

I feel guilty for being a member of the human race.

Don't touch me, I'm full of snakes.

Are we fallen angels who didn't want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?

It's not that I can't fall in love. It's really that I can't help falling in love with too many things all at once. So, you must understand why I can't distinguish between what's platonic and what isn't, because it's all too much and not enough at the same time.

Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.

Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world.

What do you want out of life? I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls. I don't know, she said. Just wait on tables and try to get along. She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.

The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.

a sociable smile is nothing but a mouth full of teeth

Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til I drop.

I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.

I just won't sleep, I decided. There were so many other interesting things to do.

The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words.

As far as I'm concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk

If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered dangerous but set in place in their compartmental understandings.

I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middle class philosophy out of it. I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.

If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH...

I promise I shall never give up, and that I'll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I'll rush around this world I insist is holy and pull at everyone's lapel and make them confess to me and to all.

Sure baby, mañana. It was always mañana. For the next few weeks that was all I heard––mañana a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.

Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.

LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; NY gets god-awful cold in the winter but there's a feeling of wacky comradeship somewhere in some streets. LA is a jungle.