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Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac Quotes

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Famous Jack Kerouac Quotes

“If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered "dangerous" but set in place in their compartmental understandings.”

IfsWantLittlesArtWisdomUnderstandingPowerfulDangerousComfortableLowsStandardsCriticsConformityStinkInspiring Writing
Book:The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished, & Newly Translated Writings
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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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“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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“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?”

WantKindWisdomHateDiesLostOne ThingSweetAll KindsBlissRemembranceSighWombWanting To DieNausea
Book:On the Road: The Original Scroll: (Penguin Classics Deluxe Edition)
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