Jack Kerouac Quotes - Page 16

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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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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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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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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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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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Ah Japhy you taught me the final lesson of them all, you can't fall off a mountain.

Jack Kerouac

Fall, Mountain, Finals

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.86, Penguin

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They spent all week saving pennies and went out Saturdays to spend fifty bucks in three hours.

Jack Kerouac

Three, Saving, Fifty

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.160, Penguin

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Is Virgin you trying to fathom me

Jack Kerouac

Trying, Fathom, Virgins

Jack Kerouac (2012). “Big Sur (Annotated)”, p.33, BookBaby

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Mainly I've been back to my books and writings and being nice and quiet and lazy. As I'm writing this, the radio says there's a foot of snow falling on Long Island. I really love snow and wish I could take a long walk in it right now.

Jack Kerouac

Nice, Book, Fall

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The smog was heavy, my eyes were weeping from it, the sun was hot, the air stank, a regular hell is L.A.

Jack Kerouac

Eye, Air, Hot

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.117, Penguin

18 Copy quote
When the railroad trains moaned, and river-winds blew, bringing echoes through the vale, it was as if a wild hum of voices, the dear voices of everybody he had known, were crying: "Peter, Peter! Where are you going, Peter?" And a big soft gust of rain came down. He put up the collar of his jacket, and bowed his head, and hurried along.

Jack Kerouac

Rain, Echoes, Wind

Jack Kerouac (1959). “The Town and the City”

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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.

Jack Kerouac

Ignorance, Joy, Sorrow

Jack Kerouac (2004). “Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac, 1947-1954”, Viking Press

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Way far back in the beginning of the world was the whirlwind warning that we could all be blown away like chips and cry- Men with tired eyes realize it now, and wait to deform and decay- with maybe they have the power of love yet in their hearts just the same, I just don't know what that word means anymore- All I want is an ice cream cone

Jack Kerouac

Eye, Tired, Heart

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Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and looked to the sky and really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other." To the children and the innocent it's all the same.

Jack Kerouac

God, Faith, Children

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.244, Penguin

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And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhat far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded - at least that's what I thought then.

Jack Kerouac

New York, Crazy, Clouds

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The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death. But who wants to die?

Jack Kerouac

Wisdom, Sweet, Hate

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.211, Penguin

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You have absolutely no regard but yourself and your damned kicks. All you think about is what's hanging between your legs and how much money or fun you can get out of people and then you just throw them aside. Not only that but you're silly about it. It never occurs to you that life is serious and that there are people trying to make something decent out of it instead of just goofing all the time.

Jack Kerouac

Fun, Silly, Thinking

Jack Kerouac (2011). “On the Road”, p.228, Penguin UK

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I could hear Dean, blissful and blabbering and frantically rocking. Only a guy who's spent five years in jail can go to such maniacal helpless extremes; beseeching at the portals of the soft source, mad with a completely phsycial realization of the origins of life-bliss; blindly seeking to return the way he came

Jack Kerouac

Origin Of Life, Years, Jail

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

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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.

Jack Kerouac

Wisdom, Mean, Worry

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

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Mankind will someday realize that we are actually in contact with the dead and with the other world, whatever it is; right now we could predict, if we only exerted enough mental will, what is going to happen within the next hundred years and be able to take steps to avoid all kinds of catastrophes. When a man dies he undergoes a mutation in his brain that we know nothing about now but which will be very clear someday if scientists get on the ball. The bastards right now are only interested in seeing if they can blow up the world.

Jack Kerouac

Men, Blow, Years

Jack Kerouac (1995). “The Portable Jack Kerouac”, Viking Adult

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God was gone; it was the silence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere. I didn't know what was happening to me, and I suddenly realized it was only the tea that we were smoking; Dean had bought some in New York. It made me think that everything was about to arrive - the moment when you know all and everything is decided forever.

Jack Kerouac

New York, Night, Thinking

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

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The unspeakable visions of the individual.

Jack Kerouac

Vision, Individual, Unspeakable

Jack Kerouac (1993). “Visions of Cody”, p.389, Penguin

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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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