Jack Kerouac was a novelist and poet who is considered a literary iconoclast and, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. He is recognized for his method of spontaneous prose. Profoundly inspirational Jack Kerouac quotes will encourage you to think a little deeper than you usually would and broaden your perspective.
If you’re searching for motivational quotes by authors that perfectly capture what you’d like to say or just want to feel inspired yourself, browse through an amazing collection of quotes by J. K. Rowling, best Joan Didion quotes and greatest John Green quotes.
Famous Jack Kerouac Quotes
Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion. Jack Kerouac
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! Jack Kerouac
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. Jack Kerouac
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. Jack Kerouac
All of life is a foreign country. Jack Kerouac
Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry. Jack Kerouac
Accept loss forever. Jack Kerouac
There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars. Jack Kerouac
You can’t teach the old maestro a new tune. Jack Kerouac
I like too many things and get all confused and hung up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion. Jack Kerouac
A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too big world. Jack Kerouac
Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road. Jack Kerouac
Avoid the world, it’s just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end. Jack Kerouac
What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? it’s the too huge world vaulting us, and it’s good bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies. Jack Kerouac
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself. Jack Kerouac
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them. Jack Kerouac
Symbolism is alright in fiction, but I tell true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew. Jack Kerouac
The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream. Jack Kerouac
I didn’t dictate sections of Visions of Cody. I typed up a segment of taped conversation with Neal Cassady, or Cody, talking about his early adventures in L.A. It’s four chapters. Jack Kerouac
A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too big world. Jack Kerouac
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 burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow Roman candles. Jack Kerouac
The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view. Jack Kerouac
Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night? Jack Kerouac
I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility. Jack Kerouac
I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion. Jack Kerouac
Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream. Jack Kerouac
I got all my boyhood in vanilla winter waves around the kitchen stove.
Jack Kerouac
Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry. Jack Kerouac
My witness is the empty sky. Jack Kerouac
Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious. Jack Kerouac
My father and my mother and my sister and I have always voted Republican, always. Jack Kerouac
Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion. Jack Kerouac
I’m not a beatnik. I’m a Catholic. Jack Kerouac
I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness. Jack Kerouac
I know who the great poets are. Jack Kerouac
I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference. Jack Kerouac
It is not my fault that certain so called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on. Jack Kerouac
I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. Jack Kerouac
As you get older, you get more genealogical. Jack Kerouac
Because in the end, you won’t remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain. Jack Kerouac
My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. Jack Kerouac
It all ends in tears anyway. Jack Kerouac
The Catholic Church is a weird church. Much mysticism is sown broadspread from its ritual mysteries till it extends into the very lives of its constituents and parishoners. Jack Kerouac
My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it’s bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad. Jack Kerouac
I didn’t dictate sections of Visions of Cody. I typed up a segment of taped conversation with Neal Cassady, or Cody, talking about his early adventures in L.A. Jack Kerouac
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. Jack Kerouac
I don’t really go out at all. Jack Kerouac
Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, God, I love you and looked to the sky and really meant it. I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other. To the children and the innocent it’s all the same. Jack Kerouac
I really hate to write. Jack Kerouac
What’s in store for me in the direction I don’t take? Jack Kerouac
My story is endless. I put in a teletype roll, you know, you know what they are, you have them in newspapers, and run it through there and fix the margins and just go, go just go, go, go. Jack Kerouac
Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life. Jack Kerouac
All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land. Jack Kerouac
It always makes me proud to love the world somehow hate’s so easy compared. Jack Kerouac
Maybe that’s what life is a wink of the eye and winking stars. Jack Kerouac
I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted. Jack Kerouac
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. Jack Kerouac
I’m going to marry my novels and have little short stories for children. Jack Kerouac
Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life. Jack Kerouac
Life must be rich and full of loving it’s no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone. Jack Kerouac
My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them. Jack Kerouac
So therefore I dedicate myself, to my art, my sleep, my dreams, my labors, my suffrances, my loneliness, my unique madness, my endless absorption and hunger because I cannot dedicate myself to any fellow being. Jack Kerouac
Mankind is like dogs, not gods as long as you don’t get mad they’ll bite you but stay mad and you’ll never be bitten. Dogs don’t respect humility and sorrow. Jack Kerouac
One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls. Jack Kerouac
If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime. Jack Kerouac
On soft Spring nights I’ll stand in the yard under the stars Something good will come out of all things yet And it will be golden and eternal just like that There’s no need to say another word. Jack Kerouac
Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic stricken. Jack Kerouac
Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running that’s the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can’t hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that’s all. Jack Kerouac
All my editors since Malcolm Cowley have had instructions to leave my prose exactly as I wrote it. In the days of Malcolm Cowley, with On the Road and The Dharma Bums, I had no power to stand by my style for better or for worse. Jack Kerouac
And the story of love is a long sad tale ending in graves. Jack Kerouac
It’s hard to write haiku. I write long, silly Indian poems. Jack Kerouac
But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you’re alive to see? Jack Kerouac
I made myself famous by writing songs and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ugliness, too. Jack Kerouac
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
I’m really Wallace Beery in The Champ. Jack Kerouac
My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women’s feet and asked for forgiveness. Jack Kerouac
Notoriety and public confession in the literary form is a frazzler of the heart you were born with, believe me. Jack Kerouac
As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. Jack Kerouac
Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now. Jack Kerouac
Something good will come of all things yet. Jack Kerouac
I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down. Jack Kerouac
They have worries, they’re counting the miles, they’re thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they’ll get there and all the time they’ll get there anyway, you see. Jack Kerouac
I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted. Jack Kerouac
We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time. Jack Kerouac
No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language knowledge. Jack Kerouac
This is the story of America. Everybody’s doing what they think they’re supposed to do. Jack Kerouac
There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars. Jack Kerouac
Don’t touch me, I’m full of snakes. Jack Kerouac
Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion. Jack Kerouac
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
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together. Jack Kerouac
It’s not that I can’t fall in love. It’s really that I can’t help falling in love with too many things all at once. So, you must understand why I can’t distinguish between what’s platonic and what isn’t, because it’s all too much and not enough at the same time. Jack Kerouac
What is that feeling when you’re driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? it’s the too huge world vaulting us, and it’s good bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies. Jack Kerouac
Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic stricken. Jack Kerouac
Colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle class non identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well to do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstacy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization. Jack Kerouac
Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world. Jack Kerouac
I was surprised, as always, be how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility. Jack Kerouac
The closer you get to real matter, rock air fire and wood, boy, the more spiritual the world is. Jack Kerouac
One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple. Jack Kerouac
I like too many things and get all confused and hung up running from one falling star to another til I drop. Jack Kerouac
Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry. Jack Kerouac
I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future. Jack Kerouac
I’m Catholic and I can’t commit suicide, but I plan to drink myself to death. Jack Kerouac
I just won’t sleep, I decided. There were so many other interesting things to do. Jack Kerouac
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. Jack Kerouac
The page is long, blank, and full of truth. When I am through with it, it shall probably be long, full, and empty with words. Jack Kerouac
