I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middle class philosophy out of it. I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.
Interpretation
The quote reflects Kerouac's belief in simple, genuine values and the disconnection he felt from societal norms.
In this quote, Jack Kerouac articulates his strong belief in fundamental values such as a good home, healthy living, and optimism. He expresses astonishment at realizing that he is among the few who hold these convictions without succumbing to the mundane philosophies often associated with middle-class life. This realization leaves him feeling adrift, holding onto only 'crazy stars,' which metaphorically represent dreams and aspirations that defy conventional expectations.
In practice
During a speech about personal values at a community gathering.
Dharma Bums refusing to subscribe to the general demand that they consume production and therefore have to work for the privilege of consuming, all that cramp they didn't really want anyway such as refrigerators, TV sets, cars, at least new fancy cars, certain hair oils and deodorants and general junk you finally always see a week later in the garbage anyway, all of them imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume.
I was amazed by the fact that I was not the only writer living, not the only young man "with a locomotive in his chest, and that's a fact," not the only youth with a million hungers and not one of them appeasable, not the only one who is lonely among multitudes, and does not know why.
My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.
The bus roared through Indiana cornfields that night; the moon illuminated the ghostly gathered husks; it was almost Halloween. I made the acquaintance of a girl and we necked all the way to Indianapolis. She was nearsighted. When we got off to eat I had to lead her by the hand to the lunch counter. She bought my meals; my sandwiches were all gone. In exchange I told her long stories.
Holding up my purring cat to the moon. I sighed.
It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.
Races didn't bother the Americans. They were something a lot better than any race. They were a People. They were the first self-constituted, self-declared, self-created People in the history of the world.
Proper deformity shows not in the fiend So horrid as in woman.
History is a relentless master. It has no present, only the past rushing into the future. To try to hold fast is to be swept aside.
How long will it take the citizens of the United States, one wonders, to recognize that the house their country bombed in Iraq is the same one they were living in until it was foreclosed?
There is a kind of courtesy in skepticism. It would be an offense against polite conventions to press our doubts too far.
That which you do not bring to consciousness comes to you as your Fate, that which you do bring to consciousness, whether it was what you thought you wanted or not, is your destiny.
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