Top 500 Jack Kerouac Quotes (2024 Update)
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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. “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

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

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

116. “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

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

— Jack Kerouac

118. “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

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

121. “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

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

131. “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

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

136. “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

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— 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. “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

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

147. “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

148. “And the story of love is a long sad tale ending in graves.”

— Jack Kerouac

149. “It always makes me proud to love the world somehow- hate’s so easy compared.”

— Jack Kerouac

150. “The tree looks like a dog, barking at heaven.”

— Jack Kerouac