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Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac Quotes

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Famous Jack Kerouac Quotes

“The words are clear as in the reflection of the world on the water. Therefore write the Word at once, everywhere, from now till your hand is paralyzed, for THERE will be your work for GOD, since you can not work for God in other ways, and would not, & don't know how, or bend that way, from habit, & from talent in the use & signification & arrangement of the Word.”

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Author:Jack Kerouac
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“In those days he really didn't know what he was talking about; that is to say, he was a young jailkid all hung-up on the wonderful possibilities of becoming a real intellectual, and he liked to talk in the tone and using the words, but in a jumbled way, that he had heard from 'real intellectuals.”

KnowsWayRealYoungTalkingWonderfulHeardPossibilityBecomingIntellectualToneHung
Book:On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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“I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.”

KnowsWholeMomentsHomeWisdomSoundRoomsSunStrangeTiredScaredStrangerWoodsHearingWhole LifeGhostHotelSecondsFar AwayFifteenCeilingsFootstepsSteamCrackedHotel RoomsUpstairsAway From HomeRoad LifeOld Wood
Book:On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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“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.”

KnowsBelieveChildrenFatherPoorSweetBlindGhostNakedMiserableGrievingNightmareRoofWretchedShudderingSweet Child
Book:Road Novels 1957-1960
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“"What do you want out of life?" I asked, and I used to ask that all the time of girls. "I don't know," she said. "Just wait on tables and try to get along." She yawned. I put my hand over her mouth and told her not to yawn. I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.”

KnowsWantTryingMadeSaidTwoHandsTogetherUsedGirlAsksWaitingWonderMouthsTablesLaysExcitedPlanningCeilingsTwo DaysSo SadDenver
Author:Jack Kerouac
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“God was gone; it was the silence of his departure. It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night. Dean was popeyed with awe. This madness would lead nowhere. I didn't know what was happening to me, and I suddenly realized it was only the tea that we were smoking; Dean had bought some in New York. It made me think that everything was about to arrive - the moment when you know all and everything is decided forever.”

ThinkingKnowsMadeMomentsNightSilenceGoneForeverNew YorkHappeningsDecidedMadnessMythTeaSmokingAweDepartureDeanRainyRainy Night
Book:Road Novels 1957-1960
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“Life was dense, dark, ancient. They watched Dean, serious and insane at his raving wheel, with eyes of hawks. All had their hands outstretched. They had come down from the back mountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they thought civilization could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and the poor broken delusion of it.”

KnowsWayHandsWould BeEyeDarkPoorSadnessSeriousBrokenHigherCivilizationOffersMountainAncientInsaneBridgesWheelsBombsSomedayDelusionCracksStretchingDeanDenseHawks
Author:Jack Kerouac
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“I'm stuck struggling in the cold water, and all I can do is grieve, grieve, in the hoar necessitous horror of the morning, bitterly I hate myself, bitterly it's too late yet while I feel better I still feel ephemeral and unreal and unable to straighten my thoughts or even really grieve, in fact I feel too stupid to be really bitter, in short I don't know what I'm doing and I'm being told what to do.”

KnowsFeelsStillsI CanFactsHateWaterCan DoMorningStruggleStupidColdHorrorLateI HateStuckBitterGrievingToo LateFeel BetterMy ThoughtsUnrealEphemeralCold WaterHate MyselfI Hate Myself
Book:Desolation Angels
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“But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won't be at peace unless they can latch to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that too worries them no end.”

KnowsNeedsSoulEndsFoundWorryExpressionFitAssumingUnhappinessAnxiousBetrayProvenUrgencyFacialFacial ExpressionLatches
Book:On the Road
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“Way far back in the beginning of the world was the whirlwind warning that we could all be blown away like chips and cry- Men with tired eyes realize it now, and wait to deform and decay- with maybe they have the power of love yet in their hearts just the same, I just don't know what that word means anymore- All I want is an ice cream cone”

KnowsMenWorldWayWantHeartMeanEyeWaitingRealizingCryTiredIceBoredWarningDecayCreamIce CreamChipsPower Of LoveWhirlwindBlown AwayConesIce Cream ConesTired Eyes
Author:Jack Kerouac
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“Now the mountains were getting that pink tinge, I mean the rocks, they were just solid rock covered with the atoms of dust accumulated there since beginningless time. In fact I was afraid of those jagged monstrosities all around and over our heads. "They're so silent!" I said. "Yeah man, you know to me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sitting there bein perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waitin for us to stop all our frettin and foolin.”

ThinkingKnowsMenYearsMeanSaidFactsSilenceRocksPrayingMountainCreaturesSittingYeahSilentDustCoveredAtomsLiving CreaturesMonstrosity
Book:Road Novels 1957-1960
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“It’s a sort of furtiveness … Like we were a generation of furtive. You know, with an inner knowledge there’s no use flaunting on that level, the level of the ‘public’, a kind of beatness – I mean, being right down to it, to ourselves, because we all really know where we are – and a weariness with all the forms, all the conventions of the world … It’s something like that. So I guess you might say we’re a beat generation.”

KnowsWorldKindMeanUseMightFormLevelsGenerationsBeatsConventionsWearinessBeat GenerationFlaunting
Author:Jack Kerouac
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“What does it mean that I am in this endless universe, thinking that I'm a man sitting under the stars on the terrace of the earth, but actually empty and awake throughout the emptiness and awakedness of everything? It means that I'm empty and awake, that I know I'm empty and awake, and that there's no difference between me and anything else.”

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Book:The Dharma Bums
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“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.”

KnowsMenDoeFactsYoungMillionsYouthLonelyHungerYoung ManChestsMultitudesAmazedLocomotives
Book:Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings
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“Mankind will someday realize that we are actually in contact with the dead and with the other world, whatever it is; right now we could predict, if we only exerted enough mental will, what is going to happen within the next hundred years and be able to take steps to avoid all kinds of catastrophes. When a man dies he undergoes a mutation in his brain that we know nothing about now but which will be very clear someday if scientists get on the ball. The bastards right now are only interested in seeing if they can blow up the world.”

IfsKnowsMenWorldYearsKindEnoughHappensAbleDiesNextRealizingBrainStepsClearSeeingMankindRight NowHundredScientistBallsBlowContactAll KindsSomedayCatastropheOther WorldsMutation
Book:The Portable Jack Kerouac
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“At night in this part of the West the stars, as I had seen them in Wyoming, were as big as Roman Candles and as lonely as the Prince who's lost his ancestral home and journeys across the spaces trying to find it again, and knows he never will.”

KnowsTryingHomeBigsNightLostStarsSpaceJourneyLonelyWestCandleWyoming
Book:On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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