Jack Kerouac Quotes

Source: The Dharma Bums

Source: On the Road: the Original Scroll

Source: Big Sur

Variant: I wished I was on the same bus as her. A pain stabbed my heart as it did everytime I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world of ours.
Source: On the Road

Part Two, Ch. 8
Source: On the Road (1957)

Letter to Edith Parker Kerouac (28 January 1957); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1969 (1999)

Used in the Apple "Think Different" marketing campaign and sometimes attributed to Kerouac on the internet, perhaps because it evokes his famous quote from On the Road: "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 never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"" The original script was actuality written by Rob Siltanen with participation of Lee Clow. In "The Real Story Behind Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign" in Forbes (14 December 2011) http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2011/12/14/the-real-story-behind-apples-think-different-campaign/ Rob Siltanen states: "I wrote everything..." "I shared my scripts with Lee, and he thought they were good. He made a couple tweaks..."
Misattributed

Source: On the Road

Source: Selected Letters, 1940-1956

"Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" in a letter to Arabelle Porter (28 May 1955); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956 (1995). Sometimes misquoted as "Be in love with your life every minute of it."
Variant: Be in love with your life every detail of it

Source: On the Road

The Dharma Bums (1958)

Source: On the Road

Source: Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings

Part Two, Ch. 4
On the Road (1957)

Not a Kerouac quote, but by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799), the German scientist, satirist, and Anglophile: http://www.quotes.net/quote/58450
Misattributed

Source: On the Road

Some of the Dharma (1997)
Source: Sometimes paraphrased as "One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple" or "Someday I will find the right words … ", and sometimes misattributed to The Dharma Bums rather than to Some of the Dharma.

Misattributed
Source: Often attributed to Kerouac's On the Road, the quote cannot be found in that book, nor in any of Kerouac's other published works.

This is not a quote by Kerouac. It's a quote by CBS broadcaster Charles Kuralt who used to present a TV news segment called 'On the Road' (which is probably how the confusion arose). This particular statement by Kuralt was made in May 1996 to students of Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19960527&id=yf8yAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yQcGAAAAIBAJ&pg=3106,5606314
Misattributed

Some of the Dharma (1997)

Satori in Paris (1966)

The Town and the City (1950)
Context: He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end. This he could sense even from the old house they lived in, with its solidly built walls and floors that held together like rock: some man, possibly an angry pessimistic man, had built the house long ago, but the house stood, and his anger and pessimism and irritable labourious sweats were forgotten; the house stood, and other men lived in it and were sheltered well in it.

In the loneliness of my life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother far away, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our death, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid...
Visions of Cody (1960)

Source: The Dharma Bums

Source: On the Road: the Original Scroll

Source: On the Road

Not a Kerouac quote, but by Allen Ginsberg in his journal of 30 July 1947. Published in The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice, page 199.
Misattributed

Source: On the Road: The Original Scroll

Lonesome Traveler (1960)

Source: On the Road

Source: The Subterraneans

Kerouac, as quoted by Allen Ginsberg in The Book of Martyrdom and Artifice (2006), page 250.

Desolation Angels (1965)
Context: Everything is going to the beat — It's the beat generation, it be-at, it's the beat to keep, it's the beat of the heart, it's being beat and down in the world and like oldtime lowdown and like in ancient civilizations the slave boatmen rowing galleys to a beat and servants spinning pottery to a beat...

Lonesome Traveler (1960)

"The Origins of the Beat Generation" in Playboy (June 1959)
Context: I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with "Beat"… the vision of the word Beat as being to mean beatific... People began to call themselves beatniks, beats, jazzniks, bopniks, bugniks and finally I was called the "avatar" of all this.

Part Five
On the Road (1957)
Context: So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

But I could go and talk on 5, 10, 20 minutes about is there a world, because there is really no world, cause sometimes I'm walkin' on the ground and I see right through the ground. And there is no world. And you'll find out.
"Is There A Beat Generation?" forum at Hunter College, New York, New York (8 November 1958)

Source: On the Road

Source: Big Sur

Source: The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

Variant: Why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?
Source: On the Road

Source: On the Road

Source: On the Road: the Original Scroll

Source: On the Road

Source: Big Sur (1962)

Source: The Dharma Bums

Sometimes misquoted as "A sociable smile is nothing but a mouth full of teeth."
Desolation Angels (1965)

Source: On the Road: The Original Scroll

Source: On the Road

Letter to Alan Harrington (23 April 1949) published in Kerouac: Selected Letters: Volume 1 1940-1956 (1996)
Source: Selected Letters, 1940-1956