Explore Quotes by Jack Kerouac

all day long wearing a hat that wasn't on my head

I wished I could explain it to those I loved, my mother, to Japhy, but there just weren't any words to describe the nothingness and purity of it. "Is there a certain and definite teaching to be given to all living creatures?" was the question probably asked to beetle browed snowy Dipankara, and his answer was the roaring silence of the diamond.

I pictured myself in a Denver bar that night, with all the gang, and in their eyes I would be strange and ragged and like the Prophet who has walked across the land to bring the dark Word, and the only Word I had was 'Wow!

The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint, and one fine old tree that I loved to sit under on those cool perfect starry California October nights unmatched anywhere in the world.

It was my dream that screwed up, the stupid hearthside idea that it would be wonderful to follow one great red line across America instead of trying various roads and routes.

Ray, what you got to do is go climb a mountain.

I'm going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.

Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.

Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent mind. Now that we know this, throw the raft away.

The cause of the world's woe is birth, the cure of the world's woe is a bent stick.

A sociable smile is nothing but a mouth full of teeth.

I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference.

Books, shmooks, this sickness has got me wishing if I can ever get out of this I'll gladly become a millworker and shut my big mouth.

Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.

As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind.

What difference does it make after all?--anonymity in the world of men is better than fame in heaven, for what’s heaven? what’s earth? All in the mind.

It was the work of the quiet mountains, this torrent of purity at my feet.

The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death. But who wants to die?

I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down.

Forgive everyone for your own sins and be sure to tell them you love them which you do.

The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.