Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouac
Jack Kerouacwas an American novelist and poet...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth12 March 1922
CityLowell, MA
CountryUnited States of America
night california perfect
The yard was full of tomato plants about to ripen, and mint, mint, everything smelling of mint, and one fine old tree that I loved to sit under on those cool perfect starry California October nights unmatched anywhere in the world.
knowing perfect pioneers
As early pioneers in the knowing, that when you lose your reason, you attain highest perfect knowing.
dream perfect rose
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.
campus everybody expression finds grooming houses living looking perfect rows schools sets television thinking time
...colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middleclass non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets is each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness...
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.
cries crowd cry dark door head heaven insults life oh poverty sad send terrors worst
Oh little Cody Pomeray if there had been some way to send a cry to you even when you were too little to know what utterances and cries are for in this dark sad earth, with your terrors in a world so malign and inhospitable, and all the insults from heaven ramming down to crowd your head with anger, pain, disgrace, worst of all the crapulous poverty in and out of every splintered door of days, if someone could have said to you then, and made you perceive, "Fear life, but don't die; you're alone, everybody's alone. Oh Cody Pomeray, you can't win, you can't lose, all is ephemeral, all is hurt.
tattoo too-much enough
It's all too much and not enough at the same time.
expression worry soul
But they need to worry and betray time with urgencies false and otherwise, purely anxious and whiny, their souls really won't be at peace unless they can latch to an established and proven worry and having once found it they assume facial expressions to fit and go with it, which is, you see, unhappiness, and all the time it all flies by them and they know it and that too worries them no end.