Kerouac Quotes

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

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

I'm Catholic and I can't commit suicide, but I plan to drink myself to death.

My shoes are clean from walking in the rain.

I'd also gone through an entire year of celibacy based on my feeling that lust was the direct cause of birth which was the direct cause of suffering and death.

I'm right there, swimming the river of hardships but I know how to swim.

I suddenly discovered the delight of rebellion.

February dawn -- frost on the path Where I paced all winter.

LA is the loneliest and most brutal of American cities.

The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.

So long and take it easy, because if you start taking things seriously, it is the end of you.

It ain't whatcha write, it's the way atcha write it.

The beauty of things must be that they end.

Something that you feel will find its own form.

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

The taste of rain -- Why kneel?

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

Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH.

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

Keep it kickwriting at all costs too, that is, write only what kicks you and keeps you overtime awake from sheer mad joy.

I have all the time in the world from life to life to do what is to do, to do what is done, to do the timeless doing.

There's wisdom in wine.

We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell

My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.

My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.

What's your road, man? - holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow. Where body how?

In my medicine cabinet, the winter fly has died of old age.

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

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

For life is holy and every moment is precious.

Swinging on delicate hinges the autumn leaf almost off the stem.

This was a manuscript of the night we couldn’t read.

If you own a rug you own too much.

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

don't stop to think of the words when you do stop, just stop to think of the picture better-and let your mind off yourself in this work.

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

I'm going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.

My witness is the empty sky.

The road must eventually lead to the whole world.

I realized either I was crazy or the world was crazy; and I picked on the world. And of course I was right.

As far as I'm concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk

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

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

She brooded and bit her rich lips: my soul began its first sink into her, deep, heady, lost; like drowning in a witches' brew, Keltic, sorcerous, starlike.

A sociable smile is nothing but a mouth full of teeth.

You seek identity in the midst of indistinguishab le chaos, in sprawling nameless reality.

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!

If you dont [sic] say what you want, what's the sense of writing?

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

Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child.