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We lay on our backs looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when he made life so sad and disinclined.

Jack Kerouac

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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
Life
Ceiling
Ceilings
Backs
Wondering
Lays
Wonder
Looking
Disinclined
Made
Wrought

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Something good will come out of all things yet — And it will be golden and eternal just like that.
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The dream is already ended and we're already awake in the golden eternity.
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A scene should be selected by the writer for haunted-ness-of-mind interest. If you're not haunted by something, as by a dream, a vision, or a memory, which are involuntary, you're not interested or even involved.
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My shoes are clean from walking in the rain.
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I wished I could explain it to those I loved, my mother, to Japhy, but there just weren't any words to describe the nothingness and purity of it. Is there a certain and definite teaching to be given to all living creatures? was the question probably asked to beetle browed snowy Dipankara, and his answer was the roaring silence of the diamond.
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Life must be rich and full of loving--it's no good otherwise, no good at all, for anyone.
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It was my dream that screwed up, the stupid hearthside idea that it would be wonderful to follow one great red line across America instead of trying various roads and routes.
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But why think about that when all the golden lands ahead of you and all kinds of unforseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?
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Better to sleep in an uncomfortable bed free, than sleep in a comfortable bed unfree.
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Somewhere along the line, the pearl would be handed to me.
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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
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All is well, practice kindness, heaven is nigh.
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Ray, what you got to do is go climb a mountain.
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-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 I'd roamed in watching, watching for someone just like her and never dreaming the darkness and the mystery and eventuality of our meeting in eternity.
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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.
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I like it because its ugly
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No man should go through life without once experiencing healthy, even bored solitude in the wilderness, finding himself depending solely on himself and thereby learning his true and hidden strength
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Somebody had tipped the American continent like a pinball machine and all the goofballs had come rolling to LA in the southwest corner. I cried for all of us. There was no end to the American sadness and the American madness. Someday we'll all start laughing and roll on the ground when we realize how funny it's been.
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Return those shoes to the shoemaker Return this hand to my father This pillow to the pillowmaker Those slippers to the shop. That wainscot to the carpenter, But my mind my tranquil and eternal Mind Return it to whom?
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I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference.
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