Jack Kerouac quote: "I ate apple pie and ice cream—it was getting better as I got deeper into Iowa, the pie bigger, the ice cream richer. There were the most beautiful bevies of girls everywhere I looked in Des Moines that afternoon—they were coming home from high school—but I had no time for thoughts like that…So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pretty girls make graves
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

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

Great laughter rang from all sides. I wondered what the Spirit of the Mountain was thinking, and loo...
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 was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my f...
JACK KEROUAC

We agreed to love each other madly.
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

I forgave everybody, I gave up, I got drunk.
JACK KEROUAC

O how wonderful life is, how miraculous, God made this and God made that", "how do you know he doesn...
JACK KEROUAC

Maybe that's a haiku, maybe not, it might be a little too complicated," said Japhy. "A real haiku's ...
JACK KEROUAC

For the first four years of my life, while he lived, I was not Ti Jean Duluoz, I was Gerard, the wor...
JACK KEROUAC

Pretty soon...do you realize there'll be so many additional childhoods and pasts with everybody writ...
JACK KEROUAC

Sweet life continues in the breeze, in the golden fields.
JACK KEROUAC

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

They stand uncertainly underneath immense skies, and everything about them is drowned.
JACK KEROUAC

The whole town had instantly gone to bed; the only noise now was barking dogs. How could I ever slee...
JACK KEROUAC

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma ...
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so ...
JACK KEROUAC

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

Y es así como, una vez obtenida la esencia de su amor, ahora erijo grandes construcciones verbales,...
JACK KEROUAC

The trouble with fashions is you want to fuck the women in their fashions but when the time comes th...
JACK KEROUAC

Quando lo trovai a Mill City quella mattina era piombato in uno di quei periodi depressi e infernali...
JACK KEROUAC

Galatea Dunkel was a tenacious loser.
JACK KEROUAC

No bitter complaints about society whatever from this grand and ideal man who really loves me moreov...
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

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

The only truth is music.
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

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

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

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

My witness is the empty sky.
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

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

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

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
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

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

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

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

The silence was an intense roar.
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

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

It all ends in tears anyway.
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

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

Ce n'è ancora, di strada
JACK KEROUAC

Books, shmooks, this sickness has got me wishing if I can ever get out of this I'll gladly become a ...
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

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

JACK KEROUAC

Non avevo niente da offrire a nessuno tranne la mia confusione.
JACK KEROUAC

I heard the Denver and Rio Grande locomotives howling off in to the mountains. I wanted to pursue my...
JACK KEROUAC

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

Somewhere along the line, the pearl would be handed to me.
JACK KEROUAC

Camminavo nella sera piena di lillà con tutti i muscoli indolenziti in mezzo alle luci della 27a St...
JACK KEROUAC

Il mondo mi deve un paio di cose.
JACK KEROUAC

He had a third martini. He looked at me intently and took hold of my arm. 'Look', he said. 'You're a...
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'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic.
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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All of life is a foreign country.
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

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

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

the road is life
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Rocks are space, and space is illusion.
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

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

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

But Dave Wain that lean rangy red head Welchman with his penchant for going off in Willie to fish in...
JACK KEROUAC

Besides, all my New York friends were in the negative, nightmare position of putting down society an...
JACK KEROUAC

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

I know who the great poets are.
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

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.
JACK KEROUAC

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

What's Your Road, Man?
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

Accept loss forever.
JACK KEROUAC

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

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

Jack Kerouac

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