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Jack Kerouac Quotes about Writing

All Jack Kerouac 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 quotes

Rest and be kind, you don't have to prove anything

Rest and be kind, you don't have to prove anything

Writing, Be Kind, Kind

Jack Kerouac (1986). “The Dharma Bums”, p.84, Penguin

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

Life, Wisdom, Writing

"Some of the Dharma". Book by Jack Kerouac, 1997.

I have the right ideas, but my words are too... complicated. I need to simplify them, so that people won't get lost in the dark when they see and hear them. I want them to shine like beacons of light in a world of overly complicated darkness. One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

Writing, Dark, Simple

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

Writing, Giving, Genius

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

Something that you feel will find its own form.

Writing, Form, Feels

Jack Kerouac (2016). “The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished, & Newly Translated Writings”, p.218, Library of America

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

Never mistake talking about writing for actual writing.

Mistake, Writing, Talking

If you dont [sic] say what you want, what's the sense of writing?

Writing, Want, What You Want

I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

Art, Writing, Feelings

It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.

Writing, Peculiar, Elements

The New York Journal-American, December 8, 1960.

Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears.

Writing, Men, Down And

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

Because I cannot write my native language and have no native home anymore, and am amazed by that horrible homelessness of all French-Canadian s abroad in America.

Home, Writing, Native Language

I have been writing my heart out all my life, but only getting a living out of it now.... ... it's not a question of the merit of art, but a question of spontaneity and sincerity and joy I say. I would like everybody in the world to tell his full life confession and tell it his own way and then we'd have something to read in our old age.

Art, Writing, Joy

I'm writing this book because we're all going to die.

Wisdom, Book, Writing

Jack Kerouac (1993). “Visions of Cody”, p.354, Penguin

I'll go to the south of Sicily in the winter, and paint memories of Arles – I'll buy a piano and Mozart me that – I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life – This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours

Memories, Writing, Winter

Jack Kerouac (2012). “Tristessa (Annotated)”, p.38, BookBaby

Keep it kickwriting at all costs too, that is, write only what kicks you and keeps you overtime awake from sheer mad joy.

Writing, Mad, Joy

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

It ain't whatcha write, it's the way atcha write it.

Writing, Way, Inspiration To Write

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

No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge

Writing, Dignity, Language

Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind.

Struggle, Writing, Mind

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

Details are the Life of Prose.

Writing, Details, Prose

You don't realize what a strain it is on the nerves to write or think-of-writing all day long, and to sleep full of nervous dreams, and to wake up not knowing who one is: this all stems from anxiety about finishing the book, about time 'growing short', etc., and the perpetual strain of invention.

Dream, Book, Writing

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

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.

Writing, Recollection, Amazement

"Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" in a letter to Arabelle Porter (28 May 1955); published in "Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956" by Jack Kerouac, 1995.

Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind.

Writing, Mind, Want

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

Rather, I think one should write, as nearly as possible, as if he were the first person on earth and was humbly and sincerly putting on paper that which he saw and experienced and loved and lost; what his passing thoughts were and his sorrows and desires.

Writing, Thinking, Sorrow

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

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