Jack Kerouac
I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.Collection: Death
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.Collection: Dreams
Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.Collection: Great
I made myself famous by writing 'songs' and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ugliness, too.Collection: Famous
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.Collection: Failure
Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay mad and you'll never be bitten. Dogs don't respect humility and sorrow.Collection: Respect
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.Collection: Communication
Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.Collection: Life
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... burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles.Collection: Time
Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?Collection: Car
I got all my boyhood in vanilla winter waves around the kitchen stove.
Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.
I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
My witness is the empty sky.
The Catholic Church is a weird church. Much mysticism is sown broadspread from its ritual mysteries till it extends into the very lives of its constituents and parishoners.
All of life is a foreign country.
Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.
If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.
Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.
It's hard to write haiku. I write long, silly Indian poems.
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.
I know who the great poets are.
Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew.
Accept loss forever.
I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic.
Notoriety and public confession in the literary form is a frazzler of the heart you were born with, believe me.
I don't really go out at all.
My father and my mother and my sister and I have always voted Republican, always.
You can't teach the old maestro a new tune.
I'm really Wallace Beery in 'The Champ.'
I really hate to write.
My story is endless. I put in a teletype roll, you know, you know what they are, you have them in newspapers, and run it through there and fix the margins and just go, go - just go, go, go.
My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet.
I didn't dictate sections of 'Visions of Cody'. I typed up a segment of taped conversation with Neal Cassady, or Cody, talking about his early adventures in L.A. It's four chapters.
As you get older, you get more... genealogical.
All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.
It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.
I didn't dictate sections of 'Visions of Cody.' I typed up a segment of taped conversation with Neal Cassady, or Cody, talking about his early adventures in L.A.
All my editors since Malcolm Cowley have had instructions to leave my prose exactly as I wrote it. In the days of Malcolm Cowley, with 'On the Road' and 'The Dharma Bums', I had no power to stand by my style for better or for worse.
Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.Collection: Wisdom
Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you're already in heaven now.Collection: 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.Collection: Inspirational
Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountainCollection: Motivational
Rest and be kind, you don't have to prove anythingCollection: Writing
It's all too much and not enough at the same time.Collection: Tattoo
I realized either I was crazy or the world was crazy; and I picked on the world. And of course I was right.Collection: Crazy
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.Collection: Life
Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.Collection: Inspirational