Quotes About Jack Kerouac

clichés are truisms and all truisms are true)—On

I see the whole thing popping and parenthesizing in every direction, the story of that house and that kitchen.

When it is recognized that there is nothing beyond what is seen of the mind itself, the discrimination of being and non-being ceases and, as there is thus no external world as the object of perception, nothing remains but the solitude of Reality.

the restaurant itself is weird especially because of a big raunch mad thicklipped sloppy young Fillipino woman sitting alone at the end of the restaurant gobbling up her food obscenely and looking at us insolently as tho to say Fuck you, I eat the way I like splashing gravy everywhere (p. 156)

the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines.

Actually I'm just a sick clown and so is everybody else.

Dean had a sweater wrapped around his ears to keep warm. He said we were a band of Arabs coming in to blow up New York.

There ain't no such thing as lumberjack, that must be a Back East expression. Up here we call 'em loggers.

Late afternoon, it was I not the void that changed.

What difference does it make after all?—anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what's heaven? what's earth? All in the mind.

New Orleans is a very dull town. It's against the law to go to the colored section. The bars are insufferably dreary.

Ere so sober Emily/ Did New England sow/ With brooms of activity/ I'd the tree-rock spoken to.

I have such a hopeless dream of walking or being there at night, nothing happens, I just pass, everything is unbearably over with.

he walked the French roads at night devising curses out of his innocent stock of words. He

Apparently Dean had been quiet for a few months; now the angel had arrived and he was going mad again.

Have some more wine, Smith, you're not making sense.

Yass, yass. He said he wants to see the 'babby' spelt with two b's when he can get to Frisco.

Mudface is the mud in your goatface. What would you say if someone was asked the question 'Does a dog have a Buddha nature?' and said 'Woof!

We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad. We made vague plans to meet in Frisco.

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

He seems to me to be headed for his ideal fate, which is compulsive psychosis dashed with a jigger of psychopathic irresponsibility and violence.

When you write letters to me, try not to be sophomoric and moribund about your criticisms of Jean et son weltanschauung [and his worldview.] A little more finesse, please, or if possible, a dash of humor.

I had met Jack Kerouac a couple of times and it mystified me that his recent success with On the Road meant only that he had freedom to become hopelessly drunk.

My golden dream was to move to New York and live in the Village and become that cool rebel beatnik Jack Kerouac.