Kerouac Quotes

The more ups and downs, the more joy I feel. The greater the fear, the greater the happiness I feel.

The details are the life of it, I insist, say everything on your mind, don’t hold back, don’t analyze or anything as you go along, say it out.

The Four Inevitabilities: 1. Musty Books. 2. Uninteresting Nature. 3. Dull Existence. 4. Blank Nirvana, buy that boy.

Don't think of words when you stop but to see picture better.

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

Absolutely no way to escape enigmans.

I'd better be a poet Or lay down dead.

I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren't people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.

Always pull back-and see how silly we must look to God.

cliches are truisms and all truisms are true

The truth of the matter is we don't understand our women; we blame on them and it's all our fault.

That's the story of my life rich or poor and mostly poor and truly poor.

Down in Denver, all I did was die.

For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me.

It's only through form that we can realize emptiness

beautiful insane in the rain

Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America.

I like it because its ugly

We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.

And with joy you realize for the first time "Thinking's just like not thinking — So I don't have to think any more".

"What do you want out of life?" I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls.

Oftentimes an originator of new language forms is called 'pretentious' by jealous talents. But it ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.

It's hard to explain and best thing to do is not be false.

...most of the time we were alone and mixing up our souls ever more and ever more till it would be terribly hard to say good-by.

What a horror it would have been if the world was real, because if the world was real, it would be immortal.

It was the work of the quiet mountains, this torrent of purity at my feet.

Oh my God, sociability is just a big smile and a big smile is nothing but teeth, I wish I could just stay up here and rest and be kind." But somebody brought up some wine and that started me off.

Yeah," I said, "but you're an artist. You don't believe in decency and honesty and gratitude. Where shall we eat?

Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live.

Ah Japhy you taught me the final lesson of them all, you can't fall off a mountain.

Eager for bread and love.

Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.

We fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess - across the night.

equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha

Your Buddhism has made you mean Ray and makes you even afraid to take your clothes off for a simple healthy orgy

How clear the realization one is going mad -- the mind has a silence, nothing happens in the physique, urine gathers in your loins, your ribs contract.

...and performing our one and noble function of the time, move.

I was a man of the earth, precisely as I had dreamed I would be.

The unspeakable visions of the individual.

Who doesn't feel studious when he doesn't have a girl with a Riviera suntan?

all day long wearing a hat that wasn't on my head

Books, shmooks, this sickness has got me wishing if I can ever get out of this I'll gladly become a millworker and shut my big mouth.

The cause of the world's woe is birth, the cure of the world's woe is a bent stick.

His friends said, "Why do you have that ugly thing hanging there?" and Bull said, "I like it because it's ugly." All his life was in that line.

Last night I walked clear down to Times Square & just as I arrived I suddenly realized I was a ghost - it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk.

but that's alright because now everything'll be alright & we'll soothe the forever boys & girls & before we're thru we'll find a name for this Goddam Golden Eternity & tell a story too

No time for poetry but exactly what is.

What difference does it make after all?--anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? what’s earth? All in the mind.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers. What Rembrandt or Van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again.

Geniuses can be scintillating and geniuses can be somber, but it's that inescapable sorrowful depth that shines through-originality.