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Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac Quotes

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Famous Jack Kerouac Quotes

“You don't realize what a strain it is on the nerves to write or think-of-writing all day long, and to sleep full of nervous dreams, and to wake up not knowing who one is: this all stems from anxiety about finishing the book, about time 'growing short', etc., and the perpetual strain of invention.”

ThinkingWritingLongBookDreamRealizingSleepKnowingGrowingAnxietyWake UpInventionNervousEtcNervesPerpetualNot KnowingStemStrainFinishing
Book:Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac, 1947-1954
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“In our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright forever and forever and forever...listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson you forgot, It is all one vast awakened thing. We were never really born, we will never really die. It has nothing to do with the imaginary idea of a personal self, other selves, many selves everywhere: Self is only an idea, a mortal idea. That which passes into everything is one thing. It's a dream already ended.”

WorldMindIdeasSelfDreamRememberDiesBornSilenceKnownForeverOne ThingLessonsIllusionEssenceMortalsImaginaryAwakenedAlright
Author:Jack Kerouac
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“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”

YearsLooksLongFeelingsWisdomDreamSeemsPastRememberFacesLyingSongLostFeltSidesWaterMillionsPiecesChildhoodDyingYears AgoEternityForgottenCloudsWoodsFamiliarGoldenRelativeManhoodTrailsFamiliarityDriftingOverheadNature BeautyLonesomeNature And BeautyLying DownDharma Bums
Book:Road Novels 1957-1960
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“Listen closely... the eternal hush of silence goes on and on throughout all this, and has been going on, and will go on and on. This is because the world is nothing but a dream and is just thought of and the everlasting eternity pays no attention to it.”

WorldHas BeensDreamPayAttentionSilenceGoes OnEternalEternityEverlastingHush
Book:The Scripture of the Golden Eternity: Pocket Poets Number 51
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“I am writing this book because we're all going to die - In the loneliness of my own life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother faraway, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our deaths, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid: with just this one pride and consolation: my broke heart in the general despair and opened up inwards to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream”

WorldWayWritingHeartMadeBookDreamHandsMotherDiesFatherLeftDarkMy OwnSleepCommonAttentionLordWifeLonelinessStupidSweetBrotherPrideBedDespairMy WifeDisappearGuidesBrokeMy BrotherTragicMy SisterFar AwayConsolationMy Own LifeGuardedHeart BrokeSleeping InSupplication
Book:Visions of Cody
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“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”

ThinkingWellsLooksChildrenWisdomDreamNightParentWalksWonderMorningHellMadnessOur ChildrenI RealizedEmptinessSomedaySmoothRiotSidewalkSnapshotsActual Life
Book:On the Road
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“-no girl had ever moved me with a story of spiritual suffering and so beautifully her soul showing out radiant as an angel wandering in hell and the hell the selfsame streets I'd roamed in watching, watching for someone just like her and never dreaming the darkness and the mystery and eventuality of our meeting in eternity.”

SoulStoriesDreamSpiritualSufferingGirlDarknessHellMysteryStreetsAngelEternityMovedMeetingsWanderRadiantLike Her
Book:The Subterraneans
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“Never dreaming, was I, poor Jack Duluoz, that the soul is dead. That from Heaven grace descends . . . No Doctor Pisspot Poorpail to tell me; no example inside my first and only skin. That love is the heritage, and cousin to death. That the only love can only be the first love, the only death the last, the only life within, and the only word . . . choked forever.”

LoveFirstsSoulDreamAgeLastsHeavenLove IsPoorForeverGraceExampleDoctorsSkinsHeritageFirst LoveCousinOnly LoveForever Love
Book:Maggie Cassidy
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