Jack Kerouac

“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!”

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

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

“And the Hippos were boiled in their tanks!”

“Love is bitter, death is sweet.”

“They understand death, they stand there in the church under the skies that have a beginningless past and go into the never-ending future, waiting themselves for death, at the foot of the dea...”

“Way far back in the beginning of the world was the whirlwind warning that we could all be blown away like chips and cry- Men with tired eyes realize it now, and wait to deform and decay- wit...”

“Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running—that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands...”

“And this is not the happiness of a magazine writer who sends in his gay little philosophy of life to the editor for the one paragraph spread in front of the magazine: This is a serious happi...”

“Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy”

“A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest. If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not intere...”

“Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammat...”

“Hell man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except that you've got to stick to it with the energy of a benn...”

“What is the universe but a lot of waves And a craving desire is a wave…”

“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.”

“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.”

“Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew.”

“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.”

“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”

“It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.”