Jack Kerouac: Trending quotes

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Jack Kerouac: 532 quotes67 likes

“We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.”

“Don't touch me, I'm full of snakes.”

“This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do.”

Source: On the Road: the Original Scroll

“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 burgandy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

“I feel guilty for being a member of the human race.”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Source: Big Sur (1962)

“Are we fallen angels who didn't want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

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

“A sociable smile is nothing but teeth.”

Jack Kerouac book Desolation Angels

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

“Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world.”

Source: On the Road: The Original Scroll

“We agreed to love each other madly.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

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

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

“As far as I'm concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk”

“I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

“The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

“Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH…”

Jack Kerouac book Big Sur

Big Sur (1962)

“I just won't sleep," I decided. There were so many other interesting things to do.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

“I promise I shall never give up, and that I'll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I'll rush around this world I insist is holy and pull at everyone's lapel and make them confess to me and to all.”

“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.”

Journal entry (November 1951) as published in the Kerouac ROMnibus http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ctitext2/resguide/resources/j100.html

“The fact that everybody in the world dreams every night ties all mankind together.”

Book of Dreams (1961) Foreword
As misquoted in Night and Day (1989) by Jack Maguire, p. 221; Maguire does not cite his source, so this widely quoted variant appears to be an erroneous paraphrase of this published statement. It is not a direct quote from some other statement by Kerouac.
Variant: All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.

“They build their own Hells.”