Jack Kerouac Quotes - Page 16

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Nothing ever happened - Not even this

Jack Kerouac

Happened

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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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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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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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What difference does it make after all?--anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? what’s earth? All in the mind.

Jack Kerouac

Wisdom, Men, Differences

Jack Kerouac (1991). “On the road”, Penguin USA

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No time for poetry but exactly what is.

Jack Kerouac

Poetry, Crafts

Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1996). “Selected letters, 1940-1956”, Penguin Paperbacks

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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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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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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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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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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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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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The beat generation (coined in Playboy)

Jack Kerouac

Generations, Beats, Playboy

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Rocks are space, and space is illusion.

Jack Kerouac

Rocks, Space, Illusion

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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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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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...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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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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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

Book, Wish, Mouths

Jack Kerouac (2012). “Big Sur (Annotated)”, p.166, BookBaby

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Mankind will someday realize that we are actually in contact with the dead and with the other world, whatever it is; right now we could predict, if we only exerted enough mental will, what is going to happen within the next hundred years and be able to take steps to avoid all kinds of catastrophes. When a man dies he undergoes a mutation in his brain that we know nothing about now but which will be very clear someday if scientists get on the ball. The bastards right now are only interested in seeing if they can blow up the world.

Jack Kerouac

Men, Blow, Years

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

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galatea was a serious girl. she was pale and looked like tears all over. big ed passed his hand through his hair and said hello. she looked at him steadily. "where have you been? why did you do this to me?" and she gave dean a dirty look; she knew the score. dean paid absolutely no attention; what he wanted now was food; he asked jane if there was anything. the confusion began right there.

Jack Kerouac

Girl, Dirty, Hair

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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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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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I told Terry I was leaving. She had been thinking about it all night and was resigned to it. Emotionlessly she kissed me in the vineyard and walked off down the row. We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.

Jack Kerouac

Night, Love Is, Thinking

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

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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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Jack Kerouac

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

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