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Jack Kerouac: 532 quotes67 likes

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums (1958)
Context: I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. Ecstacy, even, I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass.

“The first sip [of tea] is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums (1958)
Context: "Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea," said Japhy. "Remember that book I told you about; the first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy."

“We tiptoed around each other like heartbreaking new friends.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

“All of life is a foreign country.”

Jack Kerouac

Letter to John Clellon Holmes (24 June 1949), published in The Beat Vision: A Primary Sourcebook (1987) edited by Arthur Knight and Kit Knight, page 93.

“I felt free and therefore I was free.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

“Though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are still pretty glorious.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Variant: Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.
Source: The Dharma Bums

“It's only through form that we can realize emptiness”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums