Jack Kerouac Quotes

They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because 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 and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end. This he could sense even from the old house they lived in, with its solidly built walls and floors that held together like rock: some man, possibly an angry pessimistic man, had built the house long ago, but the house stood, and his anger and pessimism and irritable labourious sweats were forgotten; the house stood, and other men lived in it and were sheltered well in it.

Your art is the Holy Ghost blowing through your soul.

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

"What are you trying to do, Kerouac?" I'd ask myself in my sleepingbag at night, "trying to deny reality with all this Buddha stuff, ya jerk?" ... "Poor detailed immaculate incarnate fool, and you call yourself Self ... Take off your coat and crash wits." And I realized that all this Buddhism was a STRAIN at telling the untellable emptiness yet that nothing was truer, a perfect paradox.

All you do is head straight for the grave, a face just covers a skull awhile. Stretch that skull-cover and smile.

Everything belongs to me because I am poor.

The tree looks like a dog, barking at heaven.

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

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

As early pioneers in the knowing, that when you lose your reason, you attain highest perfect knowing.

All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.

You can't fight City Hall. It keeps changing its name.

All is well, practice kindness, heaven is nigh.

It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.