Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.

— Jack Kerouac

Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, "God, I love you" and looked to the sky and really meant it. "I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other." To the children and the innocent it's all the same.

— Jack Kerouac

...do you think God made the world to amuse himself because he was bored? Because if so he would have to be mean.

— Jack Kerouac

Great laughter rang from all sides. I wondered what the Spirit of the Mountain was thinking, and looked up and saw jack pines in the moon, and saw ghosts of old miners, and wondered about it. IN the whole eastern dark wall of the Divide this night there was silence and the whisper of the wind, except in the ravine where we roared; and on the other side of the Divide was the great Western Slope, and the big plateau that went to Steamboat Springs, and dropped, and led you to the western Colorado desert and the Utah desert; all in darkness now as 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.

— Jack Kerouac

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

— Jack Kerouac

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 by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink Fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are reshot, and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all.

— Jack Kerouac

Hateful bitch of a world, it wouldn't ever last.

— Jack Kerouac

He and I suddenly saw the whole country like an oyster for us to open; and the pearl was there, the pearl was there.

— Jack Kerouac

He had a third martini. He looked at me intently and took hold of my arm. 'Look', he said. 'You're a fish in a pond. It's drying up. You have to mutate into an amphibian, but someone keeps hanging on to you and telling you to stay in the pond, everything's going to be all right.

— Jack Kerouac

He had become completely mad in his movements; He seemed to be doing everything at the same time. It was a shaking of the head, up and down, sideways; jerky, vigorous hands; quick walking, sitting, crossing the legs, uncrossing, getting up, rubbing the hands, rubbing his fly, hitching his pants, looking up and saying 'Am,' and sudden slitting of the eyes to see everywhere; and all the time he was grabbing me by the ribs and talking, talking

— Jack Kerouac