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“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
Jack Kerouac9 likes
48 quotes and counting. Scroll to wander through 374,000+ literary moments.
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
“So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless and don't be sorry”
“The only truth is music.”
“[...]the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes “Awww!”
“A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”
“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”
“I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til I drop.”
“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”
“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 grammatical fears...”
“I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”
“All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.”
“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- with maybe they have the power of love yet in their hearts just the same, I just don't know what that word means anymore- All I want is an ice cream cone”
“The only people for me are the mad ones: the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who... burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles.”
“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!”
“Love is bitter, death is sweet.”
“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 benny addict.”
“I got all my boyhood in vanilla winter waves around the kitchen stove.”
“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 interested or even involved.”
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”
“Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”
“It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.”
“I'm really Wallace Beery in 'The Champ.'”
“But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?”
“Pain or love or danger makes you real again....”
“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.”
“After all, a homeless man has reason to cry, everything in the world is pointed against him.”
“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 dead, in a holy temple. - I get a vision of myself and the two little boys hung up in a great endless universe with nothing overhead and nothing under bbut the Infinite Nothingness, the Enormousness of it, the dead without number in all directions of existence whether inward into the atom-worlds of your own body or outward to the universe which may only be one atom in an infinity of atom-worlds and each atom-world only a figure of speech - inward, outward, up and down, nothing but emptiness and divine majesty and silence for the two little boys and me.”
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life”
“And the Hippos were boiled in their tanks!”
“Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.”
“Be in love with your life, every detail of it.”
“Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay mad and you'll never be bitten. Dogs don't respect humility and sorrow.”
“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.”
“Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy”
“I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic.”
“Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.”
“Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew.”
“Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”
“My father and my mother and my sister and I have always voted Republican, always.”
“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.”
“All of life is a foreign country.”
“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
“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.”
“All my editors since Malcolm Cowley have had instructions to leave my prose exactly as I wrote it. In the days of Malcolm Cowley, with 'On the Road' and 'The Dharma Bums', I had no power to stand by my style for better or for worse.”
“The Catholic Church is a weird church. Much mysticism is sown broadspread from its ritual mysteries till it extends into the very lives of its constituents and parishoners.”
“Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.”
“Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.”