Top 480 Quotes & Sayings by Jack Kerouac

Accept loss forever.

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

I'm really Wallace Beery in 'The Champ.'

If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

I'm not a beatnik. I'm a Catholic.

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.

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.

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.

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.

I don't really go out at all.

I got all my boyhood in vanilla winter waves around the kitchen stove.

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.

All of life is a foreign country.

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.

All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.

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.

I made myself famous by writing 'songs' and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ugliness, too.

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

Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.

My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them.

As you get older, you get more... genealogical.

My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet.

My father and my mother and my sister and I have always voted Republican, always.

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.

Notoriety and public confession in the literary form is a frazzler of the heart you were born with, believe me.

Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew.

You can't teach the old maestro a new tune.

I really hate to write.

It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.

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

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.

It's hard to write haiku. I write long, silly Indian poems.

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.

I know who the great poets are.

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.

My witness is the empty sky.

It's all too much and not enough at the same time.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

Because in the end, you won't remember the time you spent working in the office or mowing your lawn. Climb that goddamn mountain

The beauty of things must be that they end.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

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.

Night is longer than day for those who dream & day is longer than night for those who make their dreams comes true.

Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.

Rest and be kind, you don't have to prove anything

The world you see is just a movie in your mind. Rocks dont see it. Bless and sit down. Forgive and forget. Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now. That’s the story. That’s the message. Nobody understands it, nobody listens, they’re all running around like chickens with heads cut off. I will try to teach it but it will be in vain, s’why I’ll end up in a shack praying and being cool and singing by my woodstove making pancakes.

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.

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.

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

So long and take it easy, because if you start taking things seriously, it is the end of you.

Put down the pen someone else gave you. No one ever drafted a life worth living on borrowed ink.

Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.

I realized either I was crazy or the world was crazy; and I picked on the world. And of course I was right.

While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light

Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you're already in heaven now.

Be in love with your life, every detail of it.

The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.