Quotes from Jack Kerouac

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.

Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea.

All human beings are also dream beings. Dream ties all humankind together.

I'm Catholic and I can't commit suicide, but I plan to drink myself to death.

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.

Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child.

The only truth is music.

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-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.

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.

My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.

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.

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.