“If you own a rug you own too much.”
This appears not to be a Kerouac quote. It has not been found in any of Kerouac's published work.
Misattributed
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Jack Kerouac 266
American writer 1922–1969Related quotes

Letter to his younger brother George (July 18, 1938)

“We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.”

“Puppy presents on the rug. This sucked.”
Source: Once Dead, Twice Shy

Small chatter with George W. Bush in the Oval Office
Newsweek magazine
2000s

Quote in a letter to her sister Erika Schlegel, 22 February, 1922; from: Today is Tomorrow, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, ed. Thomas Schmutz; Aargauer Kunsthaus, and Zurich: Scheidegger & Spiess, 2014, p. 221
Taeuber describes creating a series of watercolors that she intends to rework across carpets, bags, pillows, and wall covers

Space (1912)
Context: Remember his mind and no other part of him lived in his new world. He said it gave him an odd sense of detachment to sit in a room among people, and to know that nothing there but himself had any relation at all to the infinite strange world of Space that flowed around them. He would listen, he said, to a great man talking, with one eye on the cat on the rug, thinking to himself how much more the cat knew than the man.

Barnes & Noble Interview with David Sprague (February 2006).

tomorrow is a new day.
Blender (December 2003)