"And this is the way a novel gets written, in ignorance, fear, sorrow, madness, and a kind of psychotic happiness as an incubator for the wonders being born."
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Quote collection
Jack Kerouac quotes (page 14 of 23)
460 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Whenever spring comes to New York I can't stand the suggestion of the land that come blowing over the river from New Jersey and I've got to go. So I went."
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"Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life."
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"Writing at least is a silent meditation even though you’re going a hundred miles an hour."
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"No matter how you travel, how 'successful' your tour, or foreshortened, you always learn something and learn to change your thoughts."
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"I felt free and therefore I was free."
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"An awful realization that I have been fooling myself all my life thinking there was a next thing to do to keep the show going and actually I'm just a sick clown and so is everybody else"
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"The secret of this kind of climbing, is like Zen. Don't think. Just dance along. It's the easiest thing in the world, actually easier than walking on flat ground which is monotonous. The cute little problems present themselves at each step and yet you don't hesitate and you find yourself on some other boulder you picked out for no special reason at all, just like zen.~ Japhy"
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"We agreed to love each other madly."
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"All is well, practice kindness, heaven is nigh."
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"Because I cannot write my native language and have no native home anymore, and am amazed by that horrible homelessness of all French-Canadian s abroad in America."
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"Never mistake talking about writing for actual writing."
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"Sal, we gotta go and never stop going 'till we get there.' 'Where we going, man?' 'I don't know but we gotta go."
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"I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost."
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"So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines."
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"You guys are going somewhere or just going?"
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"There are worse things than being mad."
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"Walking on water wasn't built in a day."
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"...notice how he will come to manhood with his own particular soul bespeaking itself through the windows which are his eyes, and such lovely eyes surely do prophesy and indicate the loveliest of souls."
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"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."
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