Jack Kerouac Quotes

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

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

It no longer makes me cry and die and tear myself to see her go because everything goes away from me...

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

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

And I go home having lost her love. And write this book.

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

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

You're a Genius all the time

Soon I'll find the right words, they'll be very simple.

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

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

I have such a hopeless dream of walking or being there at night, nothing happens, I just pass, every...

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

And the story of love is a long sad tale ending in graves.

Says, Rahula! Rahula! Face of Glory! Universe chawed and swallowed!

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

Because I am Beat, I believe in Beatitude and that God so loved the world He gave His only begotten ...

You boys going to get somewhere, or just going?" We didn't understand his question, and it was a dam...

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

...that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I ...

Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.

The tasteof rain-- Why kneel?

A poet is a blind optimist.The world is against him formany reasons. But thepoet persists. He believ...

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

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

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

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

Is Virgin you trying to fathom me

I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locom...

The Grim Reaper isn't grim at all; he's a life-saver. He isn't grim because he isn't anything. . . ....

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

Be in love with your life, every detail of it.

Buds in the snow—the deadly fightbetween two birds

And you have been forever, and will be forever, and all the worrisome smashings of your foot on inno...

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

The only truth is music.

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

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

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

A man cannot impart the true feeling of things to others unless he himself has experienced what he i...

the road is life

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

I am young now and can look upon my body and soul with pride. But it will be mangled soon, and later...

Snap your fingerstop the world - rain falls harder

All that old road of the past unreeling dizzily as if the cup of life had been overturned and everyt...

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

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

I fear mostly my inability to capture all the things that come, I fear their mysterious source, I fe...

He had a third martini. He looked at me intently and took hold of my arm. 'Look', he said. 'You're a...

My eyes were glued on lifeand they were full of tears.

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

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

Lying mouth to mouth, kiss to kiss in the pillow dark, loin to loin in unbelievable surrendering swe...

In seeking to severely penalize criminals society by putting the criminals away behind safe walls ac...

The eyes of hope looking over the flare of the hood into the maw with its white line feeding in stra...

An awful realization that I have been fooling myself all my life thinking there was a next thing to ...

Whatever anyone does,/ anyone says, in the/ past, now, everything, let/ it bounce off the rock/ of y...

Hateful bitch of a world, it wouldn't ever last.

...the/ supreme end-result of/ early Gothic phallic forms/ is the skyscraper & the/ oil drill & powe...

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

Work from your own side of literature/ & room fetish, not "publishing's" -

Hell man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what...

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

He had become completely mad in his movements; He seemed to be doing everything at the same time. It...

I had nothing to offer anybody except for my own confusion

I tried to bring up boyfriends and sex. Her great dark eyes surveyed me with emptiness and a kind of...

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

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

It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenl...

...and I realized no matter what you do it’s bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as ...

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

I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.

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

And though Remi was having worklife problems and bad lovelife with a sharp-tongued woman, he at leas...

Oh, I love, love, love women! I think women are wonderful! I love women!

At night in this part of the West the stars, as I had seen them in Wyoming, were as big as Roman Can...

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

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

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

We wandered in a frenzy and a dream (301).

Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all dow...

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

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

He and I suddenly saw the whole country like an oyster for us to open; and the pearl was there, the ...

There was nothing to talk about anymore. The only thing to do was go.

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

She spoke of evenings in the country making popcorn on the porch. Once this would have gladdened my ...

In the hall itself the din of the music - for this is the real way to play a jukebox and what it was...

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

All I wanted and all Neal wanted and all anybody wanted was some kind of penetration into the heart ...

Yet this book is to prove that no matter how you travel, how 'successful' your tour, or foreshortene...

…of constipation of the brain & diarrhea of the mouth.

I clearly saw the skeleton underneathall this show of personalitywhat is left of a manand all his pr...

What is the universe but a lot of wavesAnd a craving desire is a wave…

How is there laughter, how is there joy, as this world is always burning?

And the Hippos were boiled in their tanks!

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

I sit down and say, and I run all my friends and relatives and enemies one by one in this, without e...

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

Smith, you don't realize it's a privilege to practice giving presents to others.' The way he did it ...