Jack Kerouac Quotes - Page 16

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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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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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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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They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see.

Jack Kerouac

Wisdom, Sleep, Thinking

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.279, Penguin

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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

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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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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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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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The whole mad swirl of everything that was to come began then.

Jack Kerouac

Mad, Literature, Swirls

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.118, Penguin

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The beat generation (coined in Playboy)

Jack Kerouac

Generations, Beats, Playboy

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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

Girl, Boys, Names

Jack Kerouac (2016). “Old Angel Midnight”, p.1, City Lights Publishers

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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

Ugly Things, Bulls, Lines

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

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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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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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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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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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We fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess - across the night.

Jack Kerouac

Night, Land, America

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

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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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...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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and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear?

Jack Kerouac

Bears, Knows

Jack Kerouac (1957). “On the Road”, Viking Press

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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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Jack Kerouac

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Born: March 12, 1922
Died: October 21, 1969
Occupation: Novelist
Cite this Page: Citation

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