Top 500 Jack Kerouac Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 3 of 10

101. “I’m right there, swimming the river of hardships but I know how to swim...”

— Jack Kerouac

102. “If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.”

— Jack Kerouac

103. “Something that you feel will find its own form.”

— Jack Kerouac

104. “Something good will come of all things yet.”

— Jack Kerouac

105. “There was nothing to talk about anymore. The only thing to do was go.”

— Jack Kerouac

106. “In my medicine cabinet, the winter fly has died of old age.”

— Jack Kerouac

107. “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

108. “You boys going to get somewhere, or just going?” We didn’t understand his question, and it was a damned good question.”

— Jack Kerouac

109. “And you have been forever, and will be forever, and all the worrisome smashings of your foot on innocent cupboard doors it was only the Void pretending to be a man pretending not to know the Void.”

— Jack Kerouac

110. “But then they danced down the street 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...”

— Jack Kerouac

111. “If you own a rug you own too much.”

— Jack Kerouac

112. “Holding up my purring cat to the moon. I sighed.”

— Jack Kerouac

113. “You guys are going somewhere or just going?”

— Jack Kerouac

114. “We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked at each other for the last time.”

— Jack Kerouac

115. “No matter how you travel, how ‘successful’ your tour, or foreshortened, you always learn something and learn to change your thoughts.”

— Jack Kerouac

116. “Ah Japhy you taught me the final lesson of them all, you can’t fall off a mountain.”

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

119. “In my madness I was actually in love with her for the few hours it all lasted; it was the same unmistakable ache and stab across the mind, the same sighs, the same pain, and above all the same reluctance and fear to approach.”

— Jack Kerouac

120. “Writing at least is a silent meditation even though you’re going a hundred miles an hour.”

— Jack Kerouac

121. “Believe in the holy contour of life.”

— Jack Kerouac

122. “I want a blaze of light to flame in me forever in a timeless, dear love of everything. And why should I pretend to want anything else?”

— Jack Kerouac

123. “All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.”

— Jack Kerouac

124. “Avoid the world, it’s just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.”

— Jack Kerouac

125. “And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it’s all in my mind.”

— Jack Kerouac

126. “One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.”

— Jack Kerouac

127. “So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines.”

— Jack Kerouac

128. “You can’t live in this world but there’s nowhere else to go.”

— Jack Kerouac

129. “And when the fog’s over and the stars and the moon come out at night it’ll be a beautiful sight.”

— Jack Kerouac

130. “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...”

— Jack Kerouac

131. “Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent mind. Now that we know this, throw the raft away.”

— Jack Kerouac

132. “All is well, practice kindness, heaven is nigh.”

— Jack Kerouac

133. “I’m afraid that you’ll never understand me fully, and because of that, sometimes you’ll be frightened, disgusted, annoyed, or pleased. The thing that makes me different from all of you is the vast inner life I have. I just thrive in this, by nature. The bigger and deeper this inner life grows, the less anyone of you will understand me. That’s okay.”

— Jack Kerouac

134. “No time for poetry but exactly what is.”

— Jack Kerouac

135. “Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?”

— Jack Kerouac

136. “As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind.”

— Jack Kerouac

137. “Ah, life is a gate, a way, a path to Paradise anyway, why not live for fun and joy and love or some sort of girl by a fireside, why not go to your desire and LAUGH...”

— Jack Kerouac

138. “Everything is perfect on the street again, the world is permeated with roses of happiness all the time, but none of us know it. The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.”

— Jack Kerouac

139. “Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America.”

— Jack Kerouac

140. “It was the work of the quiet mountains, this torrent of purity at my feet.”

— Jack Kerouac

141. “I am young now and can look upon my body and soul with pride. But it will be mangled soon, and later it will begin to disintegrate, and then I shall die, and die conclusively. How can we face such a fact, and not live in fear?”

— Jack Kerouac

142. “We fumed and screamed in our mountain nook, mad drunken Americans in the mighty land. We were on the roof of America and all we could do was yell, I guess – across the night...”

— Jack Kerouac

143. “It is possible for the human spirit to win after all.”

— Jack Kerouac

144. “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

145. “Begin not from preconceived idea of what to say about image but from jewel center of interest in subject of image at moment of writing, and write outwards swimming in sea of language to peripheral release and exhaustion.”

— Jack Kerouac

146. “Life is life, and kind is kind.”

— Jack Kerouac

147. “Down in Denver, all I did was die.”

— Jack Kerouac

148. “Who can leap the world’s ties and sit with me among white clouds?”

— Jack Kerouac

149. “Walking on water wasn’t built in a day.”

— Jack Kerouac

150. “Somewhere along the line I knew there’d be girls, visions, everything; somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me.”

— Jack Kerouac