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The bus roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.
Jack Kerouac
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A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest. If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not interested or even involved.
Jack Kerouac
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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
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Soon I'll find the right words, they'll be very simple.
Jack Kerouac
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Books, shmooks, this sickness has got me wishing if I can ever get out of this I'll gladly become a millworker and shut my big mouth.
Jack Kerouac
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A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.
Jack Kerouac
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But I remember seeing a mess of leaves suddenly go skittering in the wind and into the creek, then floating rapidly down the creek towards the sea, making me feel a nameless horror even then of 'Oh my God, we're all being swept away to sea no matter what we know or say or do
Jack Kerouac
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What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.
Jack Kerouac
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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
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I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.
Jack Kerouac
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One night I realized that when you give people understanding and encouragement a funny little meek childish look abashes their eyes, no matter what they've been doing they weren't sure it was right — lambies all over the world.
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I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.
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Go moan for man. It's the pathos of people that gets us down, all the lovers in this dream.
Jack Kerouac
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Sociability is just a big smile, and a big smile is nothing but teeth.
Jack Kerouac
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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
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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
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You can't fight City Hall. It keeps changing its name.
Jack Kerouac
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The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view.
Jack Kerouac
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We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move.
Jack Kerouac
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It was the work of the quiet mountains, this torrent of purity at my feet.
Jack Kerouac
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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
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I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.
Jack Kerouac
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We lay on our backs looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when he made life so sad and disinclined.
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Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from a loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop.
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I was having a wonderful time and the whole world opened up before me because I had no dreams.
Jack Kerouac
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Quote of the day
Autumn burned brightly, a running flame through the mountains, a torch flung to the trees.
Faith Baldwin
Jack Kerouac
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Born:
March 12, 1922
Died:
October 21, 1969
(aged 47)
Bio:
Jack Kerouac was an American novelist and poet.
Known for:
On The Road (1957)
The Dharma Bums (1958)
The Subterraneans (1958)
Big Sur (1962)
Desolation Angels (1965)
Most used words:
life
time
night
man
stars
beat
love
die
mad
god
mind
people
america
sleep
road
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