Jack Kerouac

Novelist, Poet

Jack Kerouac was an American novelist and poet, best known for his seminal work 'On the Road', which captures the spirit of the Beat Generation.

Born
March 12, 1922
Died
October 21, 1969
Quotes
460
Rank
#173

Quote collection

Jack Kerouac quotes (page 20 of 23)

460 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.

Jack Kerouac Novelist, Poet
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"I want to marry a [guy], so i can rest my soul with [him] till we both get old. This can't go on all the time-- all this franticness and jumping around. We've got to go someplace, find something."

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"The human bones are but vain lines dawdling, the whole universe a blank mold of stars."

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

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"They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see."

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"Then it's goodbye, Sangsara for me Besides, girls aren't as good as they look And Samadhi is better than you think When it starts in hitting your head In with Buzz of glittergold Heaven's Angels, wailing, saying We've been waiting for you since morning, Jack Why were you so long dallying in the sooty room? This transcendental Brilliance Is the better part (of Nothingness I sing) Okay. Quit. Mad. Stop."

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"And I said, 'That last thing is what you can't get, Carlo. Nobody can get to that last thing. We keep on living in hopes of catching it once and for all."

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"galatea was a serious girl. she was pale and looked like tears all over. big ed passed his hand through his hair and said hello. she looked at him steadily. "where have you been? why did you do this to me?" and she gave dean a dirty look; she knew the score. dean paid absolutely no attention; what he wanted now was food; he asked jane if there was anything. the confusion began right there."

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"Your mind makes out the orange by seeing it, hearing it, touching it, smelling it, tasting it and thinking about it but without this mind, you call it, the orange would not be seen or heard or smelled or tasted or even mentally noticed, it's actually, that orange, depending on your mind to exist! Don't you see that? By itself it's a no-thing, it's really mental, it's seen only of your mind. In other words it's empty and awake."

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

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"and never really thought I'd amount to anything. It was precisely what I wanted the whole world to think; then I could sneak in, if that's what they wanted, and sneak out again, which I did."

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"...we all must admit that everything is fine and there's no need in the world to worry, and in fact we should realize what it would mean to us to UNDERSTAND that we're not REALLY worried about ANYTHING."

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"But on top of all that, the feelings about Princess, 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 and I had really no lie come to a point where I regarded lust as offensive and even cruel. "Pretty girls make graves," was my saying, whenever I'd had to turn my head around involuntarily to stare at the in­comparable pretties of Indian Mexico."

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""What do you want out of life?" I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls. "I don't know," she said. "Just wait on tables and try to get along." She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad."

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"I clearly saw the skeleton underneath all this show of personality what is left of a man and all his pride but bones?"

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"This was really the way my whole road experience began, and the things that were to come are too fantastic not to tell."

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"You were my last chance' she's said but don't all women say that? - But can it be by 'last chance' she doesn't mean mere marriage but some profoundly sad realization of something in me she really needs to go on living, at least that impression coming across anyway on the force of all the gloom we've shared -"

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"Nothing ever happened - Not even this"

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"The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories."

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

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