Jack Kerouac Quote

Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay ma...
JACK KEROUAC

All my editors since Malcolm Cowley have had instructions to leave my prose exactly as I wrote it. I...
JACK KEROUAC

My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet.
JACK KEROUAC

You can't teach the old maestro a new tune.
JACK KEROUAC

Accept loss forever.
JACK KEROUAC

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

As you get older, you get more... genealogical.
JACK KEROUAC

All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.
JACK KEROUAC

A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite directi...
JACK KEROUAC

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.
JACK KEROUAC

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not onl...
JACK KEROUAC

All of life is a foreign country.
JACK KEROUAC

My witness is the empty sky.
JACK KEROUAC

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
JACK KEROUAC

I got all my boyhood in vanilla winter waves around the kitchen stove.
JACK KEROUAC

It's okay, girl, we'll make it till the sun goes down forever. And until then what you got to lose b...
JACK KEROUAC

I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as p...
JACK KEROUAC

And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We kee...
JACK KEROUAC

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

Il pouvait à peine placer un mot tellement ça l'excitait de vivre.
JACK KEROUAC

Paradise!' he screamed. 'The one and only indispensable Paradise.
JACK KEROUAC

What's Your Road, Man?
JACK KEROUAC

The dream is already ended and we're already awake in the golden eternity.
JACK KEROUAC

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

The only truth is music.
JACK KEROUAC

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

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.
JACK KEROUAC

Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to ...
JACK KEROUAC

[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be s...
JACK KEROUAC

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.
JACK KEROUAC

I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference!
JACK KEROUAC

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.
JACK KEROUAC

No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderne...
JACK KEROUAC

But then they danced down the street like dingledodies, and shambled after as I've been doing all my...
JACK KEROUAC

Woe to those who spit on the beat generation, the wind will blow it back.
KEROUAC JACK

After all this kind of fanfare, and even more, I came to a point where I needed solitude and to just...
JACK KEROUAC

This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do.
JACK KEROUAC

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.
JACK KEROUAC

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.
JACK KEROUAC

Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened t...
JACK KEROUAC

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

The only people for me are the mad ones: the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,...
JACK KEROUAC

Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?
JACK KEROUAC

I didn't dictate sections of 'Visions of Cody'. I typed up a segment of taped conversati...
JACK KEROUAC

The Catholic Church is a weird church. Much mysticism is sown broadspread from its ritual mysteries ...
JACK KEROUAC

I'm really Wallace Beery in 'The Champ.'
JACK KEROUAC

because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere t...
JACK KEROUAC

One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.
JACK KEROUAC

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, th...
JACK KEROUAC

I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic.
JACK KEROUAC

It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to h...
JACK KEROUAC

So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless and don't be sorry
JACK KEROUAC

Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun t...
JACK KEROUAC

I promise I shall never give up, and that I'll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I'll ru...
JACK KEROUAC

Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.
JACK KEROUAC

I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference!.
JACK KEROUAC

I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet, concerning the message that was transm...
JACK KEROUAC

I was just looking at the jukebox. Just playing records. She said, You want to play with me?
I sa...
JACK KEROUAC

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,...
JACK KEROUAC

There is universal substance which is divine substance because where else can it be?
JACK KEROUAC

If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by sca...
JACK KEROUAC

You can't teach the old maestro a new tune.
JACK KEROUAC

Begin not from preconceived idea of what to say about image but from jewel center of interest in sub...
JACK KEROUAC

Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and loo...
JACK KEROUAC

I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was ...
JACK KEROUAC

Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream
JACK KEROUAC

The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view
JACK KEROUAC

A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest.
If you're not haun...
JACK KEROUAC

I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest mom...
JACK KEROUAC

And I realize the unbearable anguish of insanity: how uninformed people can be thinking insane peopl...
JACK KEROUAC

What's your road, man? - holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anyw...
JACK KEROUAC

My story is endless. I put in a teletype roll, you know, you know what they are, you have them in ne...
JACK KEROUAC

Besides which, she would never understand me because I like too many things and get all confused and...
JACK KEROUAC

Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.
JACK KEROUAC

we pass the fields of Perry and Madrone and where they make wine, and it's all there, all sweet the ...
JACK KEROUAC

There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.
JACK KEROUAC

Way far back in the beginning of the world was the whirlwind warning that we could all be blown away...
JACK KEROUAC

What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see ...
JACK KEROUAC

Everything is all right forever and forever and forever.
JACK KEROUAC

Jumping from boulder to boulder and never falling, with a heavy pack, is easier than it sounds; you ...
JACK KEROUAC

...colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds ...
JACK KEROUAC

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
JACK KEROUAC

Everybody was yelling 'Go! Go! Go!' (like a jam session),
JACK KEROUAC

Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea," said Japhy. "Remember that book I told you about t...
JACK KEROUAC

Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to ...
JACK KEROUAC

Will you love me in December as you do in May?
JACK KEROUAC

When you've understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can't understand this scripture, throw ...
JACK KEROUAC

Aw I don't wanta go to no such thing, I just wanta drink in alleys.'...
But you'll miss all tha...
JACK KEROUAC

A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direct...
JACK KEROUAC

It's hard to explain and best thing to do is not be false.
JACK KEROUAC

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.
JACK KEROUAC

the road is life
JACK KEROUAC

[His friend, novelist Jack Kerouac, was in the audience of about 150 at the performance.] Scores of ...
JACK KEROUAC

Oh little Cody Pomeray if there had been some way to send a cry to you even when you were too little...
JACK KEROUAC

Mainly I've been back to my books and writings and being nice and quiet and lazy. As I'm writing thi...
JACK KEROUAC

Dean took out other pictures. I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look ...
JACK KEROUAC

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.
JACK KEROUAC

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved,...
JACK KEROUAC

We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing ...
JACK KEROUAC

What is the feeling when you're driving away from people, and they recede on the plain till you see ...
JACK KEROUAC

Emotionlessly she kissed me in the vineyard and walked off down the row. We turned at a dozen paces,...
JACK KEROUAC

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

The beat generation
JACK KEROUAC

“…-no girl had ever moved me with a story of spiritual suffering and so beautifully her soul sho...
JACK KEROUAC

Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay mad and yo...
JACK KEROUAC

A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite directi...
JACK KEROUAC

The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great that I thought I wa...
JACK KEROUAC

Why did I allow myself to be bored ever in the past and to compensate for it got high or drunk or ra...
JACK KEROUAC

What’s in store for me in the direction I don’t take?
JACK KEROUAC

I was going to be left alone on my butt at the other end of the continent. But why think about that ...
JACK KEROUAC

...and everything is going to the beat - It's the beat generation, it be-at, it's the beat to keep, ...
JACK KEROUAC

Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine...
JACK KEROUAC

Buds in the snow
—the deadly fight
between two birds
JACK KEROUAC

The other man, just as
lonesome as I am
In this empty universe
JACK KEROUAC

Hitch hiked a thousand
miles and brought
You wine
JACK KEROUAC

November the seventh
The last
Faint cricket
JACK KEROUAC

They understand death, they stand there in the church under the skies that have a beginningless past...
JACK KEROUAC

Listen closely... the eternal hush of silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been going...
JACK KEROUAC

Because he was always tremendously generated towards complete relationship with his women to the poi...
JACK KEROUAC

...but I preferred reading the American landscape as we went along. Every bump, rise, and stretch in...
JACK KEROUAC

Here I was at the end of America - no more land - and now there was nowhere to go but back.
JACK KEROUAC

I suddenly realized I was in California. Warm, palmy air - air you can kiss - and palms.
JACK KEROUAC

What is the universe
but a lot of waves
And a craving desire
is a wave…
JACK KEROUAC

Don't tell them too much about your soul. They're waiting for just that.
JACK KEROUAC

And suddenly, not a soul's at the store as for other & similar & just as blank reasons, they...
JACK KEROUAC

...the restaurant itself is weird especially because of a big raunch mad thicklipped sloppy young Fi...
JACK KEROUAC

Overpowered by the sadness of not knowing what there is in the world, and what I'm doing. Fee...
JACK KEROUAC

LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities; NY gets god-awful cold in the winter but the...
JACK KEROUAC

I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinki...
JACK KEROUAC

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

As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind.
JACK KEROUAC

Houses are full of things that gather dust
JACK KEROUAC

beautiful insane
in the rain
JACK KEROUAC

My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to...
JACK KEROUAC

I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference.
JACK KEROUAC

I didn't dictate sections of 'Visions of Cody.' I typed up a segment of taped conversati...
JACK KEROUAC

My father and my mother and my sister and I have always voted Republican, always.
JACK KEROUAC

I made myself famous by writing 'songs' and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ...
JACK KEROUAC

Get married and have halfbreed babies, manuscripts, home¬spun blankets and mother’s milk on your ...
JACK KEROUAC

Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.
JACK KEROUAC

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all
JACK KEROUAC

The first sip [of tea] is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness,...
JACK KEROUAC

The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint, and ...
JACK KEROUAC

Rocks are space, and space is illusion.
JACK KEROUAC

Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain't this and that at...
JACK KEROUAC

Mind is the Maker, for no reason at all, for all this creation, created to fall.
JACK KEROUAC

It was all completely serious, all completely hallucinated, all completely happy.
JACK KEROUAC

i wish the whole world was dead serious about food instead of silly rockets and machines and explosi...
JACK KEROUAC

I think it's a lovely hallucination but I love it sorta.
JACK KEROUAC

Who can leap the world's ties and sit with me among white clouds?
JACK KEROUAC

I don't wanta hear all your word descriptions of words words words you made up all winter, man I wan...
JACK KEROUAC

The human bones are but vain lines dawdling, the whole universe a blank mold of stars.
JACK KEROUAC

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

I see a vision of a great rucksack revolution thousands or even millions of young Americans wanderin...
JACK KEROUAC

The silence was an intense roar.
JACK KEROUAC

Pretty girls make graves
JACK KEROUAC

Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glor...
JACK KEROUAC

colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds it...
JACK KEROUAC

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

Are we fallen angels who didn't want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our...
JACK KEROUAC

Pain or love or danger makes you real again....
JACK KEROUAC

Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.
JACK KEROUAC

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, th...
JACK KEROUAC

It all ends in tears anyway.
JACK KEROUAC

At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver...
JACK KEROUAC

At night I closed my eyes and saw my bones threading the mud of my grave.
JACK KEROUAC

Great laughter rang from all sides. I wondered what the Spirit of the Mountain was thinking, and loo...
JACK KEROUAC

It is possible for the human spirit to win after all.
JACK KEROUAC

As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge gold sunburning clou...
JACK KEROUAC

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

...we all must admit that everything is fine and there's no need in the world to worry, and in fact ...
JACK KEROUAC

Ah, it was a fine night, a warm night, a wine-drinking night, a moony night, and a night to hug your...
JACK KEROUAC

For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze...
JACK KEROUAC

Sure baby, mañana. It was always mañana. For the next few weeks that was all I heard––mañana ...
JACK KEROUAC

His friends said, "Why do you have that ugly thing hanging there?" and Bull said, "I like it because...
JACK KEROUAC

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

And for just a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was th...
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

What do you want out of life?" I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls.
I don't k...
JACK KEROUAC

We agreed to love each other madly.
JACK KEROUAC

My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and ask...
JACK KEROUAC

So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, ...
JACK KEROUAC

But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wa...
JACK KEROUAC

Sal, we gotta go and never stop going 'till we get there.'
'Where we going, man?'
'I don't...
JACK KEROUAC

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, th...
JACK KEROUAC

And I dreamed of a home long ago in New England, my little kitkats trying to go a thousand miles fol...
JACK KEROUAC

The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I w...
JACK KEROUAC

...because in one sense the drinker learns wisdom, in the words of Goethe or Blake or whichever it w...
JACK KEROUAC

...Cody is furiously explaining to his little son Tim 'Never let the right hand know what your left ...
JACK KEROUAC

...the great black bird broods outside my window in the high dark night waiting to enfold me when I ...
JACK KEROUAC

I went to sit in the bus station and think this over. I ate another apple pie and ice cream; that’...
JACK KEROUAC

The smog was heavy, my eyes were weeping from it, the sun was hot, the air stank, a regular hell is ...
JACK KEROUAC

I could hear everything, together with the hum of my hotel neon. I never felt sadder in my life. LA ...
JACK KEROUAC

He lived with his mother, father and sister; had a room of his own, with the fourth-floor windows st...
JACK KEROUAC

And at night the river flows, it bears pale stars on the holy water, some sink like veils, some show...
JACK KEROUAC

Now you're going East with Sal," Galatea said, "and what do you think you're going to accomplish by ...
JACK KEROUAC

It’s a sort of furtiveness … Like we were a generation of furtive. You know, with an inner knowl...
JACK KEROUAC

What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.

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Jack Kerouac

What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.

Jack Kerouac

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