Quotes from Jack Kerouac

Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize 'The stars are words' and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this world too. And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it's all in my mind.

The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death. But who wants to die?

The road must eventually lead to the whole world.

Besides which, she 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.

I wished I was on the same bus as her. A pain stabbed my heart as it did everytime I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world of ours.

all I wanted to do was sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere, and go and find out what everybody was doing all over the country.

It's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies

You'd be surprised how little I knew even up to yesterday

Love is all.

I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wandering around with rucksacks, going up to mountains to pray, making children laugh and old men glad, making young girls happy and old girls happier, all of 'em Zen Lunatics who go about writing poems that happen to appear in their heads for no reason and also by being kind and also by strange unexpected acts keep giving visions of eternal freedom to everybody and to all living creatures ...

It was a rainy night. It was the myth of a rainy night.

The silence was an intense roar.

The empty blue sky of space says 'All this comes back to me, then goes again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don't care, it still belongs to me

Her little shoulders drove me mad; I hugged her and hugged her. And she loved it. 'I love love,' she said, closing her eyes. I promised her beautiful love. I gloated over her. Our stories were told; we subsided into silence and sweet anticipatory thoughts. It was as simple as that. You could have all your Peaches and Bettys and Marylous and Ritas and Camilles and Inezes in this world; this was my girl and my kind of girlsoul, and I told her that.

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.

I have nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion.

And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all.

Aw I don't wanta go to no such thing, I just wanta drink in alleys.'... But you'll miss all that, just for some old wine.' There's wisdom in wine, goddam it!' I yelled. 'Have a shot!

Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live.

Paris is a woman but London is an independent man puffing his pipe in a pub.

I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.

I'm right there, swimming the river of hardships but I know how to swim...

my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom.

I had nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion