Jack Kerouac Quotes - Page 17

Quotes about:

The unspeakable visions of the individual.

Jack Kerouac

Vision, Individual, Unspeakable

Jack Kerouac (1993). “Visions of Cody”, p.389, Penguin

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

Jack Kerouac

Fall, Mountain, Finals

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.86, Penguin

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Once there was Louis Armstrong blowing his beautiful top in the muds of New Orleans; before him the mad musicians who had paraded on official days and broke up their Sousa marches into ragtime. Then there was swing, and Roy Eldridge, vigorous and virile, blasting the horn for everything it had in waves of power and logic and subtlety - leaning into it with glittering eyes and a lovely smile and sending it out broadcast to rock the jazz world.

Jack Kerouac

Beautiful, Eye, New Orleans

Jack Kerouac (1976). “On the Road”, p.241, Penguin

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God was gone; it was the silence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere. I didn't know what was happening to me, and I suddenly realized it was only the tea that we were smoking; Dean had bought some in New York. It made me think that everything was about to arrive - the moment when you know all and everything is decided forever.

Jack Kerouac

New York, Night, Thinking

Jack Kerouac (2007). “Road Novels 1957-1960”

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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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Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.

Jack Kerouac

Girl, Vision, Would Be

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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Then it's goodbye, Sangsara for me Besides, girls aren't as good as they look And Samadhi is better than you think When it starts in hitting your head In with Buzz of glittergold Heaven's Angels, wailing, saying We've been waiting for you since morning, Jack Why were you so long dallying in the sooty room? This transcendental Brilliance Is the better part (of Nothingness I sing) Okay. Quit. Mad. Stop.

Jack Kerouac

Girl, Goodbye, Morning

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Is Virgin you trying to fathom me

Jack Kerouac

Trying, Fathom, Virgins

Jack Kerouac (2012). “Big Sur (Annotated)”, p.33, BookBaby

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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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Sometimes I’d get mad because things didn’t work out so well, I’d spoil a flapjack, or slip in the snowfield while getting water, or one time my shovel went sailing down into the gorge, and I’d be so mad I’d want to bite the mountaintops and would come in the shack and kick the cupboard and hurt my toe. But let the mind beware, though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.

Jack Kerouac

Hurt, Mad, Water

Jack Kerouac (2011). “The Dharma Bums”, p.254, Penguin UK

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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.

Jack Kerouac

Ceilings, Wonder, Made

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.156, Penguin

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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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It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night.

Jack Kerouac

Night, Rainy, Myth

"On the Road".

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

Jack Kerouac

Three, Saving, Fifty

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.160, Penguin

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But night would come and with it the mountain moon and the lake would be moon - laned and I'd go out and sit in the grass and meditate facing west, wishing there were a Personal God in all this impersonal matter.

Jack Kerouac

Wish, Matter

"The Dharma Bums".

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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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And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhat far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded - at least that's what I thought then.

Jack Kerouac

New York, Crazy, Clouds

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Mainly I've been back to my books and writings and being nice and quiet and lazy. As I'm writing this, the radio says there's a foot of snow falling on Long Island. I really love snow and wish I could take a long walk in it right now.

Jack Kerouac

Nice, Book, Fall

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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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And this is the way a novel gets written, in ignorance, fear, sorrow, madness, and a kind of psychotic happiness as an incubator for the wonders being born.

Jack Kerouac

Ignorance, Joy, Sorrow

Jack Kerouac (2004). “Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac, 1947-1954”, Viking Press

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Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and looked to the sky and really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other." To the children and the innocent it's all the same.

Jack Kerouac

God, Faith, Children

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.244, Penguin

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How clear the realization one is going mad -- the mind has a silence, nothing happens in the physique, urine gathers in your loins, your ribs contract.

Jack Kerouac

Mad, Silence, Mind

Jack Kerouac (1958). “The Subterraneans”, p.74, Grove Press

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A fine thing to be talking about angels in this day when common thieves smash the holy rosaries of their victims in the street.

Jack Kerouac

Angel, Talking, Rosary

Jack Kerouac, Ann Charters (1995). “The portable Jack Kerouac”, Penguin Group USA

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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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