Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouacwas an American novelist and poet...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 March 1922
CityLowell, MA
CountryUnited States of America
wisdom art powerful
If critics say your work stinks it's because they want it to stink and they can make it stink by scaring you into conformity with their comfortable little standards. Standards so low that they can no longer be considered "dangerous" but set in place in their compartmental understandings.
art feelings hiding
Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.
artist epic mad
How I wished I'd have had a camera of my own, a mad mental camera that could register pictorial shots, of the photographic artist himself prowling about for his ultimate shot - an epic in itself. (On the road with Robert Frank, 1958)
art writing joy
I have been writing my heart out all my life, but only getting a living out of it now.... ... it's not a question of the merit of art, but a question of spontaneity and sincerity and joy I say. I would like everybody in the world to tell his full life confession and tell it his own way and then we'd have something to read in our old age...
art mistake past
Bop began with Jazz but one afternoon somewhere on a sidewalk maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie or Charlie Parker or Thelonious Monk was walking past a men's clothing store on 42nd Street or South Main in L.A. and from a loudspeaker they suddenly heard a wild impossible mistake in jazz that could only have been heard inside their own imaginary head, and that is a new art. Bop.
art writing feelings
I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.
dream wisdom art
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.
dozen kissed last looked love turned walked
Emotionlessly she kissed me in the vineyard and walked off down the row. We turned at a dozen paces, for love is a duel, and looked up at each other for the last time.
everybody jam yelling
Everybody was yelling 'Go! Go! Go!' (like a jam session),
bite dogs gods mankind respect stay
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.
angel darkness dreaming girl hell id meeting moved mystery radiant showing soul spiritual streets suffering wandering watching
-no girl had ever moved me with a story of spiritual suffering and so beautifully her soul showing out radiant as an angel wandering in hell and the hell the selfsame streets Id roamed in watching, watching for someone just like her and never dreaming the darkness and the mystery and eventuality of our meeting in eternity,
ahead alive alone events glad golden kinds left lurking surprise wait
I was going to be left alone on my butt at the other end of the continent. But why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?
book books-and-reading fifth fourth oriental passion second third understand
Now you understand the Oriental passion for tea," said Japhy. "Remember that book I told you about the first sip is joy, the second is gladness, the third is serenity, the fourth is madness, the fifth is ecstasy.
My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet.