1,027 Quotes by Jack Kerouac

I’d also gone through an entire year of celibacy based on my feeling that lust was the direct cause of birth which was the direct cause of suffering and death.

It’s good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.

O hell, I’m sick of life – If I had any guts I’d drown myself in that tiresome water but that wouldn’t be getting it over at all, I can just see the big transformations and plans jellying down there to curse us up in some other wretched suffering form eternities of it – I guess that’s what the kid feels – She looks so sad down there wandering Ophelialike in bare feet among thunders.

I’d better be a poet Or lay down dead.

You boys going to get somewhere, or just going?” We didn’t understand his question, and it was a damned good question.

Pain or love or danger makes you real again...

Contrary to the general belief about photography, you don’t need bright sunlight: the best moodiest pictures are taken in the dim light of almost dusk, or of rainy days...

He doesn’t need any money, all he needs is his rucksack with those little plastic bags of dried food and a good pair of shoes and off he goes and enjoys the privileges of a millionaire in surroundings like this.

The old tree brooded over me silently, a living thing. I heard a mouse snoring in the garden weeds. The rooftops of Berkeley looked like pitiful living meat sheltering grieving phantoms from the enternality of the heavens which they feared to face. By the time I went to bed I wasn’t taken in by no Princess or no desire for no Princess and nobody’s disapproval and I felt glad and slept well.