Top 500 Jack Kerouac Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “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

2. “Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don’t be sorry.”

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Positive Life Quotes, Life Lessons Quotes, Life Is Short Quotes, Freedom Quotes, Beautiful Quotes

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

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Quotes About Writing, Beautiful Quotes

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

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Journey Quotes, Perspective Quotes, Moving On Quotes, Future Quotes, Freedom Quotes

5. “The only truth is music.”

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Music Quotes, Creativity Quotes

6. “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.”

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Creativity Quotes, Live Life Quotes, Passion Quotes, Freedom Quotes, Crazy Quotes

7. “There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Journey Quotes, Fiction Quotes, Moving On Quotes, Freedom Quotes, Travel Quotes

8. “I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.”

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Self-Realization Quotes, Freedom Quotes, Imagination Quotes, Meaning of Life Quotes, Adventure Quotes

9. “Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream.”

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Dream Big Quotes, Imagination Quotes

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

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Experience Quotes, Cute Quotes, Carpe Diem Quotes, Joy Quotes

13. “It’s all too much and not enough at the same time.”

— Jack Kerouac

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14. “Houses are full of things that gather dust.”

— Jack Kerouac

15. “Let nature do the freezing and frightening and isolating in this world. Let men work and love and fight it off.”

— Jack Kerouac

16. “I don’t know, I don’t care, and it doesn’t make any difference.”

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Caring Quotes

17. “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

Featured in: Journey Quotes, Crazy Quotes, Moving Quotes, Travel Quotes

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

— Jack Kerouac

19. “Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.”

— Jack Kerouac

20. “Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world. ”

— Jack Kerouac

21. “Practice kindness all day to everybody and you will realize you’re already in heaven now.”

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Empathy Quotes, Enjoy Life Quotes, Happy Sunday Quotes, Peace of Mind Quotes, Happy Monday Quotes

22. “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

Featured in: Loneliness Quotes

23. “Rest and be kind, you don’t have to prove anything.”

— Jack Kerouac

24. “I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.”

— Jack Kerouac

Featured in: Sad Quotes About Life

25. “A sociable smile is nothing but a mouth full of teeth.”

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

27. “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.”

— Jack Kerouac

28. “It ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.”

— Jack Kerouac

29. “Don’t drink to get drunk. Drink to enjoy life.”

— Jack Kerouac

30. “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

Featured in: Quotes About Stars

31. “The best teacher is experience and not through someone’s distorted point of view.”

— Jack Kerouac

32. “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

33. “Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”

— Jack Kerouac

34. “Accept loss forever. Be submissive to everything, open, listening. No fear or shame in the dignity of your experience, language, and knowledge. Be in love with your life.”

— Jack Kerouac

35. “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

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

38. “For life is holy and every moment is precious.”

— Jack Kerouac

39. “No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength.”

— Jack Kerouac

40. “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

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

— Jack Kerouac

42. “The bus roared on. I was going home in October. Everybody goes home in October.”

— Jack Kerouac

43. “I am always thinking ‘What am I doing here? Is this the way I am supposed to feel?’”

— Jack Kerouac

44. “Will you love me in December as you do in May?”

— Jack Kerouac

45. “Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.”

— Jack Kerouac

46. “The beauty of things must be that they end.”

— Jack Kerouac

47. “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

48. “I’m Catholic and I can’t commit suicide, but I plan to drink myself to death.”

— Jack Kerouac

49. “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

50. “All of life is a foreign country.”

— Jack Kerouac

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