Ah, Jack Kerouac! A man of many words, but not just any words, the kind that keep you pondering for days. Kerouac, the kingpin of the Beat Generation, was no stranger to the wild, pulsating rhythm of life, and he sure knew how to phrase it in a way that would set your thoughts ablaze. Welcome to our latest compilation: “50 Wild Jack Kerouac Quotes”.
You might not know this, but Kerouac once wrote an entire novel, “On The Road“, in just three weeks on a continuous 120-foot roll of teletype paper. Legend has it, he was so fervently consumed by the beat of his thoughts that regular paper just wouldn't do; he didn't want to break his creative flow by having to change the pages. Now, that's wild! Much like that iconic tale, our handpicked collection of “Jack Kerouac Quotes” captures the relentless, unapologetic, and downright electric spirit of the man. So sit tight, and get ready to be hit by a whirlwind of Kerouac's wildest wisdom.
1. “I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference.”
2. “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
3. “Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.”
4. “My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.”
5. “One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
6. “I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.”
7. “Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
8. “Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.”
9. “Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain.”
10. “Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.”
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Savor the Moment
- “Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.”
- “Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”
- “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.”
- “Rest and be kind, you don’t have to prove anything.”
- “Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”
- “I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”
- “Pain or love or danger makes you real again.”
- “Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream.”
- “One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.”
- “All of life is a foreign country.”
Journey of Self-Discovery
- “Who knows, my God, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?”
- “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.”
- “The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view.”
- “I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till I drop.”
- “Maybe that’s what life is… a wink of the eye and winking stars.”
- “I have nothing to offer but my own wild enthusiasm.”
- “Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.”
- “My witness is the empty sky.”
- “We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.”
- “Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.”
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Embrace the Chaos
- “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, keep rolling under the stars…”
- “I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”
- “What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? It's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's goodbye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
- “I realized that I had died and been reborn numberless times but just didn't remember especially because the transitions from life to death and back to life are so ghostly easy, a magical action for naught, like falling asleep and waking up again a million times, the utter casualness and deep ignorance of it.”
- “Will you love me in December as you do in May?”
- “My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.”
- “Nothing is lost, everything is transformed.”
- “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.”
- “As we crossed the Colorado-Utah border I saw God in the sky in the form of huge gold sunburning clouds above the desert that seemed to point a finger at me and say, Pass here and go on, you're on the road to heaven.”
- “What is not in the open street is false, derived, that is to say, literature.”
Embrace Freedom
- “You're a genius all the time.”
- “Believe in the holy contour of life.”
- “I felt free and therefore I was free.”
- “The only truth is music.”
- “I'm going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children.”
- “Don’t let the past dictate who you are, but let it be part of who you will become.”
- “It all ends in tears anyway.”
- “My witness is the empty sky.”
- “Life must be rich and full of loving–it's no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.”
- “I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.”
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