Quotes from book
On the Road
On the Road is a 1957 novel by American writer Jack Kerouac, based on the travels of Kerouac and his friends across the United States. It is considered a defining work of the postwar Beat and Counterculture generations, with its protagonists living life against a backdrop of jazz, poetry, and drug use. The novel is a roman à clef, with many key figures of the Beat movement, such as William S. Burroughs , Allen Ginsberg and Neal Cassady represented by characters in the book, including Kerouac himself as the narrator Sal Paradise.
Not a Kerouac quote, but by Jon Krakauer, from his nonfiction book Into the Wild (1996).
Misattributed
Source: On the Road
“The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view.”
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.
Part One, Ch. 1
On the Road (1957)
Context: They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because 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!"
“There was nothing to talk about anymore. The only thing to do was go.”
Source: On the Road
“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
Source: On the Road
Variant: I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another til I drop.
Source: On the Road
“I'd sleep and forget it; I had my own life, my own sad and ragged life forever.”
Source: On the Road
“I had nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion”
Variant: I have nothing to offer anybody, except my own confusion.
Source: On the Road
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
“Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”
Part Two, Ch. 3
On the Road (1957)
