Jack Kerouac Quotes - Page 18

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Life was dense, dark, ancient. They watched Dean, serious and insane at his raving wheel, with eyes of hawks. All had their hands outstretched. They had come down from the back mountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they thought civilization could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and the poor broken delusion of it.

Jack Kerouac

Sadness, Eye, Dark

"On the Road".

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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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It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night.

Jack Kerouac

Night, Rainy, Myth

"On the Road".

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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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And he had a nice home in Ohio with wife, daughter, Christmas tree, two cars, garage, lawn, lawnmower, but he couldn't enjoy any of it because he really wasn't free. It was sadly true.

Jack Kerouac

Daughter, Nice, Home

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

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

Jack Kerouac

Pride, Men, Skeletons

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And I realize the unbearable anguish of insanity: how uninformed people can be thinking insane people are "happy," O God, in fact it was Irwin Garden once warned me not to think the madhouses are full of "happy nuts." (p. 200)

Jack Kerouac

Garden, Thinking, Nuts

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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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The beat generation (coined in Playboy)

Jack Kerouac

Generations, Beats, Playboy

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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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Eager for bread and love.

Jack Kerouac

Love, Age, And Love

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

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And there in the blue air I saw for the first time, far off, the great snowy tops of the Rocky Mountains. I had to get to Denver at once.

Jack Kerouac

Air, Blue, Mountain

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

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I swore I'd be in Chicago tomorrow, and made sure of that, taking a bus to Chicago, spending most of my money, and didn't give a damn, just as long as I'd be in Chicago tomorrow.

Jack Kerouac

Cities, Long, Giving

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.121, Penguin

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Hell man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except that you've got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict.

Jack Kerouac

Writing, Men, Energy

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

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We should be wondering tonight, "Is there a world?" But I could go and talk on 5, 10, 20 minutes about is there a world, because there is really no world, cause sometimes I'm walkin' on the ground and I see right through the ground. And there is no world. And you'll find out.

Jack Kerouac

Tonight, World, Causes

"Is There A Beat Generation?". Forum at Hunter College, New York, November 8, 1958.

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And you have been forever, and will be forever, and all the worrisome smashings of your foot on innocent cupboard doors it was only the Void pretending to be a man pretending not to know the Void.

Jack Kerouac

Men, Doors, Feet

Jack Kerouac (1995). “Desolation Angels”, Riverhead Trade (Paperbacks)

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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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...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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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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The only alternative to sleeping out, hopping freights, and doing what I wanted, I saw in a vision would be to just sit with a hundred other patients in front of a nice television set in a madhouse, where we could be "supervised."

Jack Kerouac

Nice, Sleep, Vision

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.121, Penguin

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Anybody doesn't like these pitchers don't like potry, see? Anybody don't like potry go home see television shots of big hatted cowboys being tolerated by kind horses. Robert Frank, Swiss, unobtrusive, nice, with that little camera that he raises and snaps with one hand he sucked a sad poem right out of America onto film, taking rank among the poets of the world. To Robert Frank I now give this message: You got eyes.

Jack Kerouac

Horse, Nice, Eye

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It's pretty amazing to see a guy, while steering at the wheel, suddenly raise his little 300 dollar German camera with one hand and snap something that's on the move in front of him, and through an unwashed windshield at that. (On the road with Robert Frank, 1958)

Jack Kerouac

Moving, Hands, Guy

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At lilac evening I walked with every muscle aching among the lights of 27th and Welton in the Denver colored section, wishing I were a Negro, feeling that the best the white world had offered was not enough ecstasy for me, not enough life, joy, kicks, darkness, music, not enough night.

Jack Kerouac

Night, Light, White

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