Quote

The cause of the world's woe is birth, the cure of the world's woe is a bent stick.

Jack Kerouac

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jack Kerouac
Age: 47 †
Born: 1922
Born: March 13
Died: 1969
Died: October 21
Novelist
Poet
Screenwriter
Writer
East Chelmsford
Massachusetts
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kérouac
Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac
Kerouac
Jean-Louis Kerouac
Causes
Woe
World
Bent
Cure
Cures
Stick
Sticks
Birth
Cause

More quotes by Jack Kerouac

Image
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
Image
Dean's California--wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.
Jack Kerouac
Image
It's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies
Jack Kerouac
Image
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
Image
But I remember seeing a mess of leaves suddenly go skittering in the wind and into the creek, then floating rapidly down the creek towards the sea, making me feel a nameless horror even then of 'Oh my God, we're all being swept away to sea no matter what we know or say or do
Jack Kerouac
Image
It was a rainy night. It was the myth of the rainy night.
Jack Kerouac
Image
i wish the whole world was dead serious about food instead of silly rockets and machines and explosives using everybody's food money to blow their heads off anyway.
Jack Kerouac
Image
equally empty, equally to be loved, equally a coming Buddha
Jack Kerouac
Image
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.
Jack Kerouac
Image
And the story of love is a long sad tale ending in graves.
Jack Kerouac
Image
Are we fallen angels who didn't want to believe that nothing is nothing and so were born to lose our loved ones and dear friends one by one and finally our own life, to see it proved?
Jack Kerouac
Image
Some's bastards, some's ain't. That's the score.
Jack Kerouac
Image
As far as I'm concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk
Jack Kerouac
Image
..and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didnt know who I was
Jack Kerouac
Image
A pain stabbed my heart as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.
Jack Kerouac
Image
When the railroad trains moaned, and river-winds blew, bringing echoes through the vale, it was as if a wild hum of voices, the dear voices of everybody he had known, were crying: Peter, Peter! Where are you going, Peter? And a big soft gust of rain came down. He put up the collar of his jacket, and bowed his head, and hurried along.
Jack Kerouac
Image
You don't realize what a strain it is on the nerves to write or think-of-writing all day long, and to sleep full of nervous dreams, and to wake up not knowing who one is: this all stems from anxiety about finishing the book, about time 'growing short', etc., and the perpetual strain of invention.
Jack Kerouac
Image
So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines.
Jack Kerouac
Image
I looked up at the dark sky and prayed to God for a better break in life and a better chance to do something for the little people I loved.
Jack Kerouac
Image
and never really thought I'd amount to anything. It was precisely what I wanted the whole world to think then I could sneak in, if that's what they wanted, and sneak out again, which I did.
Jack Kerouac