Jack Kerouac

Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.

One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.

I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.

Accept loss forever.

The truth of the matter is you die all you do is die and yet you live yes you live and thats no Harvard lie.

Aw I don't wanta go to no such thing, I just wanta drink in alleys.'... But you'll miss all that, just for some old wine.' There's wisdom in wine, goddam it!' I yelled. 'Have a shot!'

My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet.

The only people for me are the mad ones: the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who... burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles.

Rest and be kind, you don’t have to prove anything.

I don't really go out at all.

Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.

The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view.

My father and my mother and my sister and I have always voted Republican, always.

All my editors since Malcolm Cowley have had instructions to leave my prose exactly as I wrote it. In the days of Malcolm Cowley, with 'On the Road' and 'The Dharma Bums', I had no power to stand by my style for better or for worse.

It's hard to write haiku. I write long, silly Indian poems.

And when the fogs over and the stars and the moon come out at night itll be a beautiful sight.

To me a mountain is a buddha. think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sittin 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.

I really hate to write.

Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.

I got all my boyhood in vanilla winter waves around the kitchen stove.

My witness is the empty sky.

Last night I walked clear down to Times Square & just as I arrived I suddenly realized I was a ghost - it was my ghost walking on the sidewalk.

You can't teach the old maestro a new tune.

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize youre already in heaven now.

The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view.

We had longer ways to go. But no matter the road is life.

Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay mad and you'll never be bitten. Dogs don't respect humility and sorrow.

I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic.

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.

You are the equal of the idol who has given you your inspiration.

Dont drink to get drunk. Drink to enjoy life.

Jumping from boulder to boulder and never falling with a heavy pack is easier than it sounds you just cant fall when you get into the rhythm of the dance.

My fault my failure is not in the passions I have but in my lack of control of them.

It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.

Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?

Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew.

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.

A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.

Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.

For life is holy and every moment is precious.

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

Jumping from boulder to boulder and never falling, with a heavy pack, is easier than it sounds; you just can't fall when you get into the rhythm of the dance.

The sun on your back. Two fists in the wind. And the horizon teasing you farther down a great road. We had longer ways to go. But no matter the road is life.

Because he had no place he could stay in without getting tired of it and because there was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars

Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.

Notoriety and public confession in the literary form is a frazzler of the heart you were born with, believe me.

Accept loss forever. Be submissive to everything.

My story is endless. I put in a teletype roll, you know, you know what they are, you have them in newspapers, and run it through there and fix the margins and just go, go - just go, go, go.

There are worse things than being mad.

The more ups and downs, the more joy I feel. The greater the fear, the greater the happiness I feel.

All of life is a foreign country.

As early pioneers in the knowing, that when you lose your reason, you attain highest perfect knowing.

We were all delighted, we all realized we were leaving confusion and nonsense behind and performing our one and noble function of the time, move.

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.

All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.

The more you study, the more you subsequently know; naturally, the more you know, the nearer you get to perfection as a journalist.

My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.

If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.