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Jack Kerouac Quotes - Page 5

All Quotes Adventure Age Art Childhood Children Confusion Country Darkness Drinking Earth Emptiness Eternity Feelings Fun Genius Giving Goodbye Hate Heart Heaven Hell Home Inspirational Journey Joy Kindness Language Leaving Life Literature Los Angeles Love Lying Madness Moon Morning Mountain Pain Passion Past Personality Pride Rain Running Sadness School Silence Sleep Sorrow Soul Travel Vision Waiting Walking Water Wine Winter Wisdom Worry Writing

Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.

Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.

Wisdom, Sleep, Bed

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.123, Penguin

To think that so much comes to so little, to think that life is really short.

Thinking, Littles, Life Is

Jack Kerouac (1959). “The Town and the City”

One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.

Wisdom, Peace, Kindness

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.134, Penguin

When you start separating people from their rivers, what have you got? Bureaucracy!

Rivers, People, Bureaucracy

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.231, Penguin

The silence was an intense roar.

Silence, Intense

Flannery O'Connor, Truman Capote, Ray Bradbury, James Baldwin, James Purdy (1962). “Some postwar American writers”

I'd rather hop freights around the country and cook my food out of tin cans over wood fires, than be rich and have a home or work.

Country, Home, Fire

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.118, Penguin

The first sip [of tea] is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy.

Joy, Serenity, Tea

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.67, Penguin

There's wisdom in wine.

Wine

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.190, Penguin

Bein Crazy is the least of my worries.

Crazy, Worry

The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.

Dream, Stars, Air

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.145, Penguin

If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered "dangerous" but set in place in their compartmental understandings.

Wisdom, Art, Powerful

Jack Kerouac (2016). “The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished, & Newly Translated Writings”, p.402, Library of America

And as far as I can see the world is too old for us to talk about it with our new words.

World, New Words, I Can

Jack Kerouac (2012). “Big Sur (Annotated)”, p.34, BookBaby

Pretty girls make graves

Girl, Pretty Girl, Graves

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.29, Penguin

My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.

Wisdom, Aunt, Men

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

and nobody knows what’s going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old

Rags, Growing, Forlorn

Jack Kerouac (2007). “On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)”, p.366, Penguin

If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

Wisdom, Empathy, Faults

Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from a loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop.

Art, Mistake, Past

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

Sure baby, mañana. It was always mañana. For the next few weeks that was all I heard––mañana a lovely word and one that probably means heaven.

Baby, Mean, Heaven

What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-by. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.

Goodbye, Travel, Crazy

"On the Road" by Jack Kerouac, (Ch. 8), 1957.

The dream is already ended and we're already awake in the golden eternity.

Dream, Golden, Eternity

Jack Kerouac (2016). “Old Angel Midnight”, p.6, City Lights Publishers

It's hard to explain and best thing to do is not be false.

Things To Do, Best Things, Hard

Jack Kerouac (2011). “Big Sur”, p.24, Penguin

I rather like the idea of having all my hours to myself: eating a Fudge Sundae, watching a movie, sleeping on my couch, singing in the bathroom, studying the woods, kidding around with a girl, playing cards lazily - all kinds of stuff that American brands 'shiftless.'

Girl, Sleep, Ice Cream

Jack Kerouac (2000). “Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings”, p.136, Penguin

The empty blue sky of space says 'All this comes back to me, then goes again, and comes back again, then goes again, and I don't care, it still belongs to me

Wisdom, Sky, Space

Genius gives birth, talent delivers. What Rembrandt or Van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again. Born writers of the future are amazed already at what they're seeing now, what we'll all see in time for the first time, and then see imitated many times by made writers.

Writing, Night, Giving

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

Writing at least is a silent meditation even though you’re going a hundred miles an hour.

Writing, Meditation, Silent

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