Quotes from Jack Kerouac

I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it.

This is a thing which astonishes me no end, but affects you not.

Oh what was the racket that backeted and smashed in raging might, to make this oil-puddle world?--

When I got better I realized what a rat he was, but then I had to understand the impossible complexity of his life, how he had to leave me there, sick, to get on with his wives and woes.

I fear mostly my inability to capture all the things that come, I fear their mysterious source, I fear their fate, I fear me, in short. This is true…it's like finding a river of gold when you haven't even got a cup to save a cupful…you've but a thimble, and that thimble is your pathetic brain and labour and humanness.

I've got my full rucksack pack and it's spring, I'm going to go Southwest to the dry land, to the long lone land of Texas and Chihuahua and the gay streets of Mexico night, music coming out of doors, girls, wine, weed, wild hats, viva! What does it matter? Like the ants that have nothing to do but dig all day, I have nothing to do but what I want and be kind and remain nevertheless uninfluenced by imaginary judgments and pray for the light.

I see as much as doors'll allow, open or shut.

I'd rather die than be famous, I want to go live in the desert With long wild hair, eating At my campfire, full of sand

I realized either I was crazy or the world was crazy; and I picked on the world. And of course I was right.

If all the world were green, there would be no such thing as the color green. Similarly, men cannot know what it is to be together without otherwise knowing what it is to be apart. If all the world were love, then, how could love exist? This is why we turn away from each other on moments of great happiness and closeness. How can we know happiness and closeness without contrasting them, like lights?

Tonight while walking on the waterfront in the angelic streets I suddenly wanted to tell you how wonderful I think you are. Please don't dislike me. What is the mystery of the world? Nobody knows they're angels.

I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop.