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Jack Kerouac Quotes

Total quotes: 16
“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: Future, 107 Of The Greatest Single Sentences In Literature, Perfect Sentences
“Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: Desire, Paralysis, Decision-Making, Taking Risks, Wanting Someone You Can't Have
“It was like the imminent arrival of Gargantuan, preparations had to be made to widen the gutters of Denver and foreshorten certain laws to fit his suffering bulk and bursting ecstasies.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: Beat, Writing, Denver, Writers, Partying
“Because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars...”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: travel, Stars, Leaving
“Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that god damn mountain.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Tagged: travel, Wanderlust, Adventure, Lust For Life, Writers
“And it’s finally only in the woods you get that nostalgia for 'cities' at last, you dream of long gray journeys to cities where soft evenings’ll unfold like Paris but never seeing how sickening it will be because of the primordial innocence of health and stillness in the wilds — So I tell myself 'Be Wise.'”
— Jack Kerouac, Big Sur
Tagged: Woods, Forests, Escape
“You dont have to torture your consciousness with endless thinking.”
— Jack Kerouac, Big Sur
Tagged: Thinking, Too Much Thought, Mind Won't Shutup
“Even in dreams be kind.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity (City Lights Pocket Poets Series)
Tagged: Dreams, Empathy, kindness
“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: Perfect Words
“An awful realization that I have been fooling myself all my life thinking there was a next thing to do to keep the show going and actually I'm just a sick clown and so is everybody else. All my tricks laid bare, even the realization that they're laid bare itself laid bare as a lotta bunk.”
— Jack Kerouac, Big Sur
Tagged: Let Go, Nature
“Did I create that sky? Yes.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity (City Lights Pocket Poets Series)
Tagged: Sky, New Minds
“Blind milky light fills our night; and the morning is a crystal.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Scripture of the Golden Eternity
Tagged: Good Morning Quotes, Crystal Air, Nights
“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, On the Road
Tagged: Sex, Dating, Relationships
“Once I was young and had so much more orientation and could talk with nervous intelligence about everything and with clarity and without as much literary preambling as this; in other words this is the story of an unself-confident man, at the same time of an egomaniac, naturally, facetious won't do—just to start at the beginning and let the truth seep out, that's what I'll do—.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Subterraneans
Tagged: first lines of books, Longest Sentence Ever, Self-awareness
“Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH . . . but I ran away from that seashore and never came back again without that secret knowledge: that it didn't want me there, that I was a fool to sit there in the first place, the sea has its waves, the man has his fireside, period.”
— Jack Kerouac, Big Sur
Tagged: Fires, Fireside, Sitting By Fires, Paradise
“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Tagged: How To Think, Nature
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