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Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac Quotes

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Famous Jack Kerouac Quotes

“And at night the river flows, it bears pale stars on the holy water, some sink like veils, some show like fish, the great moon that once was rose now high like a blazing milk flails its white reflection vertical and deep in the dark surgey mass wall river's grinding bed push. As in a sad dream, under the streetlamp, by pocky unpaved holes in dirt, the father James Cassidy comes home with lunchpail and lantern, limping, redfaced, and turns in for supper and sleep. Now a door slams. The kids have rushed out for the last play, the mothers are planning and slamming in kitchens, you can hear it out in swish leaf orchards, on popcorn swings, in the million-foliaged sweet wafted night of sighs, songs, shushes. A thousand things up and down the street, deep, lovely, dangerous, aureating, breathing, throbbing like stars; a whistle, a faint yell; the flow of Lowell over rooftops beyond; the bark on the river, the wild goose of the night yakking, ducking in the sand and sparkle; the ululating lap and purl and lovely mystery on the shore, dark, always dark the river's cunning unseen lips, murmuring kisses, eating night, stealing sand, sneaky. 'Mag-gie!' the kids are calling under the railroad bridge where they've been swimming. The freight train still rumbles over a hundred cars long, the engine threw the flare on little white bathers, little Picasso horses of the night as dense and tragic in the gloom comes my soul looking for what was there that disappeared and left, lost, down a path--the gloom of love. Maggie, the girl I loved.”

LoveNightTowns
Book:Maggie Cassidy
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“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.”

WayLongMadeStoriesHandsNightGirlGoneMoonMealsBusLunchHalloweenAcquaintanceSandwichesIndianaLong StoryIndianapolis
Book:On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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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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“And what does the rain say at night in a small town, what does the rain have to say? Who walks beneath dripping melancholy branches listening to the rain? Who is there in the rain’s million-needled blurring splash, listening to the grave music of the rain at night, September rain, September rain, so dark and soft? Who is there listening to steady level roaring rain all around, brooding and listening and waiting, in the rain-washed, rain-twinkled dark of night?”

DoeNightWaitingDarkWalksLevelsMillionsListeningRainTownsGravesBranchesMelancholySteadySeptemberSmall TownRoaringBroodingDrippingRain At Night
Book:The Town and the City
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“Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize 'The stars are words' and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this world too. And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it’s all in my mind.”

ThinkingWorldWayMindLittlesMatterNightUniverseStarsRealizingRoomsThis WorldMountainEndlessMilky Way
Book:Lonesome Traveler
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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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“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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