Jack Kerouac Quotes

251 Sourced Quotes

There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white, like washlines, and emptyheaded.

Jack Kerouac
Your Buddhism has made you mean Ray and makes you even afraid to take your clothes off for a simple healthy orgy

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

Jack Kerouac
Vanity of vanities… all is vanity.' You kill yourself to get to the grave. Especially you kill yourself to get to the grave before you die; and the name of the grave is 'success', the name of that grave is hullabullo boom boom horseshit.

Jack Kerouac
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.

Jack Kerouac
I took a straight picture that made me look like a thirty-year-old Italian who'd kill anybody who said something against his mother.

Jack Kerouac
For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me.

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

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

Jack Kerouac
Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.

Jack Kerouac
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
I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middle class philosophy out of it. I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.

Jack Kerouac
The requirements for prose and verse are the same, i.e. blow – What a man most wishes to hide, revise, and unsay, is precisely what Literature is waiting and bleeding for. Every doctor knows, every Prophet knows the convulsion of truth.

Jack Kerouac
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.

Jack Kerouac
Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?

Jack Kerouac
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.

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

Jack Kerouac
Oh my God, sociability is just a big smile and a big smile is nothing but teeth, I wish I could just stay up here and rest and be kind." But somebody brought up some wine and that started me off.

Jack Kerouac
Last night I walked clear down to Times Square & just as I arrived I suddenly realized I was a ghost - it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk.

Jack Kerouac
The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories.

Jack Kerouac
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
Somebody had tipped the American continent like a pinball machine and all the goofballs had come rolling to LA in the southwest corner. I cried for all of us. There was no end to the American sadness and the American madness. Someday we'll all start laughing and roll on the ground when we realize how funny it's been.

Jack Kerouac
I was having a wonderful time and the whole world opened up before me because I had no dreams.

Jack Kerouac
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.

Jack Kerouac