Jack Kerouac Quotes - Page 16

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Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running—that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all.

Jack Kerouac

Happiness, Running, Beach

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.7, Penguin

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What is he aching to do? What are we all aching to do? What do we want?” She didn’t know. She yawned. She was sleepy. It was too much. Nobody could tell. Nobody would ever tell. It was all over. She was eighteen and most lovely, and lost.

Jack Kerouac

Lovely, Want, Too Much

Jack Kerouac (2011). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: The Original Scroll”, p.345, Penguin UK

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Think what a great world revolution will take place when ... [there are] millions of guys all over the world with rucksacks on their backs tramping around the back country.

Jack Kerouac

Country, Journey, Thinking

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.203, Penguin

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fear life but don't die, your alone, everybody's alone, oh Cody Pomeray you can't win you can't lose all is ephemeral all is hurt

Jack Kerouac

Hurt, Winning, Ephemeral

Jack Kerouac (1972). “Visions of Cody”, London : André Deutsch

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The cowboy music twanged in the roadhouse and carried across the fields, all sadness. It was all right with me. I kissed my baby and we put out the lights.

Jack Kerouac

Baby, Sadness, Cowboy

Jack Kerouac (2007). “Road Novels 1957-1960”

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I nudged myself closer to the ledge and closed my eyes and thought 'Oh what a life this is, why do we have to be born in the first place, and only so we can have our poor gentle flesh laid out to such impossible horrors as huge mountains and rock and empty space,' and with horror I remembered the famous Zen saying, 'When you get to the top of a mountain, keep climbing.' The saying made my hair stand on end; it had been such cute poetry sitting on Alvah's straw mats.

Jack Kerouac

Cute, Eye, Hair

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Because anybody can write, but not everybody invents new forms of writing. Gertrude Stein invented a new form of writing and her imitators are just "talents."

Jack Kerouac

Writing, Judging, Feelings

"The portable Jack Kerouac".

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I am writing this book because we're all going to die - In the loneliness of my own life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother faraway, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our deaths, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid: with just this one pride and consolation: my broke heart in the general despair and opened up inwards to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream

Jack Kerouac

Mother, Dream, Sweet

Jack Kerouac (1972). “Visions of Cody”, London : André Deutsch

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They were like the man with the dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.

Jack Kerouac

Hipster, Men, America

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.153, Penguin

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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

Jack Kerouac

Girl, Boys, Names

Jack Kerouac (2016). “Old Angel Midnight”, p.1, City Lights Publishers

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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.

Jack Kerouac

Ugly Things, Bulls, Lines

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road”, Viking Press

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and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear?

Jack Kerouac

Bears, Knows

Jack Kerouac (1957). “On the Road”, Viking Press

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We all agree it's too big to keep up with, that we're surrounded by life, that we'll never understand it, so we center it all in by swigging Scotch from the bottle and when it's empty I run out of the car and buy another one, period.

Jack Kerouac

Running, Scotch, Car

Jack Kerouac (2012). “Big Sur (Annotated)”, p.56, BookBaby

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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.

Jack Kerouac

Wisdom, Sleep, Thinking

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.279, Penguin

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But night would come and with it the mountain moon and the lake would be moon - laned and I'd go out and sit in the grass and meditate facing west, wishing there were a Personal God in all this impersonal matter.

Jack Kerouac

Wish, Matter

"The Dharma Bums".

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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.

Jack Kerouac

Years, Suffering And Death, Feelings

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.29, Penguin

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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.

Jack Kerouac

Girl, Goodbye, Morning

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The beat generation (coined in Playboy)

Jack Kerouac

Generations, Beats, Playboy

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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.

Jack Kerouac

Girl, Dirty, Hair

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

Jack Kerouac

Moving, Noble, Function

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.219, Penguin

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Everything is perfect on the street again, the world is permeated with roses of happiness all the time, but none of us know it. The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.

Jack Kerouac

Dream, Perfect, Rose

Jack Kerouac (2007). “Lonesome Traveler”, p.40, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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I'm stuck struggling in the cold water, and all I can do is grieve, grieve, in the hoar necessitous horror of the morning, bitterly I hate myself, bitterly it's too late yet while I feel better I still feel ephemeral and unreal and unable to straighten my thoughts or even really grieve, in fact I feel too stupid to be really bitter, in short I don't know what I'm doing and I'm being told what to do.

Jack Kerouac

Morning, Hate, Stupid

Jack Kerouac (2012). “Desolation Angels”, p.18, Penguin UK

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Sometimes I’d get mad because things didn’t work out so well, I’d spoil a flapjack, or slip in the snowfield while getting water, or one time my shovel went sailing down into the gorge, and I’d be so mad I’d want to bite the mountaintops and would come in the shack and kick the cupboard and hurt my toe. But let the mind beware, though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.

Jack Kerouac

Hurt, Mad, Water

Jack Kerouac (2011). “The Dharma Bums”, p.254, Penguin UK

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A fine thing to be talking about angels in this day when common thieves smash the holy rosaries of their victims in the street.

Jack Kerouac

Angel, Talking, Rosary

Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1995). “The portable Jack Kerouac”, Penguin Group USA

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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.

Jack Kerouac

Mad, Silence, Mind

Jack Kerouac (1958). “The Subterraneans”, p.74, Grove Press

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Jack Kerouac

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Born: March 12, 1922
Died: October 21, 1969
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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