Jack kerouac quotes

Something good will come out of all things yet — And it will be golden and eternal just like that.

Pain or love or danger makes you real again.

If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered "dangerous" but set in place in their compartmental understandings.

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.

Some of my most neurotically fierce bitterness is the result of realizing how untrue people have become.

I promise I shall never give up, and that I'll die yelling & laughing.

I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

It’s not that I can’t fall in love. It’s really that I can’t help falling in love with too many things all at once. So, you must understand why I can’t distinguish between what’s platonic and what isn’t, because it’s all too much and not enough at the same time.

Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.

I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.

I felt free and therefore I was free.

He had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars.

The world you see is just a movie in your mind. Rocks dont see it. Bless and sit down. Forgive and forget. Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now. That’s the story. That’s the message. Nobody understands it, nobody listens, they’re all running around like chickens with heads cut off. I will try to teach it but it will be in vain, s’why I’ll end up in a shack praying and being cool and singing by my woodstove making pancakes.

Listen closely... the eternal hush of silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been going on, and will go on and on. This is because the world is nothing but a dream and is just thought of and the everlasting eternity pays no attention to it.

Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain

Contrary to the general belief about photography, you don't need bright sunlight: the best moodiest pictures are taken in the dim light of almost dusk, or of rainy days.

While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light

Some's bastards, some's ain't. That's the score.

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

My eyes were glued on life and they were full of tears.

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

In our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever...listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, It is all one vast awakened thing. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended.

Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize 'The stars are words' and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this world too. And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it’s all in my mind.

I feel guilty for being a member of the human race.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

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

You can't live in this world but there's nowhere else to go.

As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge gold sunburning clouds above the desert that seemed to point a finger at me and say, "Pass here and go on, you're on the road to heaven.

There are worse things than being mad.

Life is life, and kind is kind

All of life is a foreign country.

Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink.

Bein Crazy is the least of my worries.

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

Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.

Rest and be kind, you don't have to prove anything

When you start separating people from their rivers, what have you got? Bureaucracy!

We tiptoed around each other like heartbreaking new friends.

The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.

Be in love with your life, every detail of it.

So therefore I dedicate myself, to my art, my sleep, my dreams, my labors, my suffrances, my loneliness, my unique madness, my endless absorption and hunger because I cannot dedicate myself to any fellow being.

Suppose we suddenly wake up and see that what we thought to be this and that, ain't this and that at all?

The first sip [of tea] is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy.

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

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

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

Life must be rich and full of loving--it's no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you're already in heaven now.

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

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

If you tell a true story, you can't be wrong.

I have the right ideas, but my words are too... complicated. I need to simplify them, so that people won't get lost in the dark when they see and hear them. I want them to shine like beacons of light in a world of overly complicated darkness. One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

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

They build their own Hells.

I promise I shall never give up, and that I'll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I'll rush around this world I insist is holy and pull at everyone's lapel and make them confess to me and to all.

Something that you feel will find its own form.

And as far as I can see the world is too old for us to talk about it with our new words.

all I wanted to do was sneak out into the night and disappear somewhere, and go and find out what everybody was doing all over the country.

What's in store for me in the direction I don't take?

The only truth is music.

ah, you always go for the ones who don't really want you

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

The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.

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.

No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge.

For life is holy and every moment is precious.

Desolation, desolation, I owe so much to desolation.

You aren't ever going to be anything in this world unless you do what you want to do, when you want to do it--don't plan anything, just go out and do it.

I petted the dogs who didn't argue with me ever. All dogs love God. They're wiser than their masters.

The empty blue sky of space says 'All this comes back to me, then goes again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don't care, it still belongs to me

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

I see as much as doors'll allow, open or shut.

Something great is about to happen to me: I'm about to love somebody very much.

I came to a point where I needed solitude and just stop the machine of ‘thinking’ and ‘enjoying’ what they call ‘living’, I just wanted to lie in the grass and look at the clouds.

Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.

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

Everything is ecstasy inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds. But in our true blissful essence of mind [it] is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever.

My witness is the empty sky.

i wish the whole world was dead serious about food instead of silly rockets and machines and explosives using everybody's food money to blow their heads off anyway.

You are the equal of the idol who has given you your inspiration

I want a blaze of light to flame in me forever in a timeless, dear love of everything. And why should I pretend to want anything else?

There's wisdom in wine.

What does it mean that I am in this endless universe, thinking that I'm a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of the earth, but actually empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of everything? It means that I'm empty and awake, that I know I'm empty and awake, and that there's no difference between me and anything else.

Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

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

Believe in the holy contour of life.

Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.

The fact that everybody in the world dreams every night ties all mankind together.

I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down.

The silence was an intense roar.

Writing at least is a silent meditation even though you’re going a hundred miles an hour.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.

You'd be surprised how little I knew even up to yesterday

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.

It's all too much and not enough at the same time.

colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstacy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization.

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

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

The road must eventually lead to the whole world.

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

It's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies

My life is a vast inconsequential epic.

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

Night is longer than day for those who dream & day is longer than night for those who make their dreams comes true.

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

On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word.

Houses are full of things that gather dust

I'd rather hop freights around the country and cook my food out of tin cans over wood fires, than be rich and have a home or work.

The beauty of things must be that they end.

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

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

listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot

and nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old

I was surprised, as always, be how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.

I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.

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

Don't drink to get drunk. Drink to enjoy life.

After all, a homeless man has reason to cry, everything in the world is pointed against him.

No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength

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

Who knows, my God, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?

It's okay, girl, we'll make it till the sun goes down forever. And until then what you got to lose but the losing? We're fallen angels who didn't believe that nothing means nothing.