Quotes from Jack Kerouac

And he had a nice home in Ohio with wife, daughter, Christmas tree, two cars, garage, lawn, lawnmower, but he couldn't enjoy any of it because he really wasn't free. It was sadly true.

So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines.

So I went up and there she was, the girl with the pure and innocent dear eyes that I had always searched for and for so long. We agreed to love each other madly.

And all the insects ceased in honor of the moon.

And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhat far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded - at least that's what I thought then.

A poet is a blind optimist. The world is against him for many reasons. But the poet persists. He believes that he is on the right track, no matter what any of his fellow men say. In his eternal search for truth, the poet is alone. He tries to be timeless in a society built on time.

The little flowers grew everywhere around the rocks, and no one had asked them to grow, or me to grow.

And I go home having lost her love. And write this book.

Vanity of vanities… all is vanity.' You kill yourself to get to the grave. Especially you kill yourself to get to the grave before you die; and the name of the grave is 'success', the name of that grave is hullabullo boom boom horseshit.

In a sense, I'm mad (and withdrawn from life) while they're sane, human, normal - but in another sense, I speak from the depths of a vision of truth when I say that this continual jockeying for position is the enemy of life in itself. It may be life, 'life is like that,' it may be human and true, but it's also the death-part of life, and our purpose after all is to live and be true. We'll see.

So easy in the woods to daydream and pray to the local spirits and say "Allow me to stay here, I only want peace" and those foggy peaks answer back mutely Yes

I believe in order, tenderness, and piety.