Quotes About Kerouac

I didn't dictate sections of 'Visions of Cody'. I typed up a segment of taped conversation with Neal Cassady, or Cody, talking about his early adventures in L.A. It's four chapters.

My reasoning, if one can call it that, was inflamed by the scatter shot passions of youth and a literary diet overly rich in the works of Nietzshe, Kerouac, and John Menlove Edwards...

Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara. O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac

I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down.

There's a guy, Anatole Broyard, of the N. Y. Times Book Review, who's still chasing Kerouac's corpse with a stiletto.

Ginsberg, Burroughs, and Kerouac were all on the side of the savage. That their penny-ante gnosticism was not only perpetuated but mythologized and spread abroad as a gospel of emancipation is something for which we have the Sixties to thank -- or to blame.

But among the great road trips of American history--from Lewis and Clark to Alexis de Tocqueville to Jack Kerouac-- it hardly rates a mention.

Around Jack (Kerouac) there circulated a palpable aura of fame and death.

Living this life in the same sorta way that Kerouac lived, you get to hang out at shows and drink and you're able to not really face reality and adulthood the way most of my friends are.

I would say that Times Square was the central hangout for Burroughs, Kerouac, and myself from about 1945 to 1948.

And when she talks of Carrie White her face takes on an odd pinched look that is more like Lovecraft out of Arkham than Kerouac out of Southern Cal.

I was pretty partial to Kerouac and I also liked Flannery O'Connor and the Southern Gothic writing and local writers, like Jesse Stewart. They became an inspiration for how I wanted my writing voice to be.

I have tonight begun reading a stupid, shitty book by Kerouac called Big Sur , and I would give a ball to wake up tomorrow on some empty ridge with a herd of beatniks grazing in the clearing about 200 yards below the house. And then to squat with the big boomer and feel it on my shoulder with the smell of grease and powder and, later, a little blood.

So: an epic novel of the Tathagata? Yes, but not a very good one. Kerouac would have done better.

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.

cliches are truisms and all truisms are true

Gus was looking at him for confirmation of all his sorrows.

You'd never care to plant some roots in society, I suppose," mused the other.

I realized either I was crazy or the world was crazy; and I picked on the world. And of course I was right.

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

why not I be like the Void, inexhaustibly fertile, beyond serenity, beyond even gladness, just Old Jack

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

Goodnight gentle readers, sleep; sweet music to your dreams.

Comparisons are odious, Smith