Quote

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

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
Solely
Men
Findings
Experiencing
Life
Finding
Manhood
Healthy
Strength
Wilderness
Learning
Boredom
True
Hidden
Depending
Without
Bored
Thereby
Even
Solitude

More quotes by Jack Kerouac

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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?
Jack Kerouac
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You were my last chance' she's said but don't all women say that? - But can it be by 'last chance' she doesn't mean mere marriage but some profoundly sad realization of something in me she really needs to go on living, at least that impression coming across anyway on the force of all the gloom we've shared -
Jack Kerouac
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It all ends in tears anyway.
Jack Kerouac
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Man lowers his head and lunges into civilization, forgetting the days of his infancy when he sought truth in a snowflake or a stick. Man forgets the wisdom of the child.
Jack Kerouac
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They spent all week saving pennies and went out Saturdays to spend fifty bucks in three hours.
Jack Kerouac
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Isn't it true that you start your life a sweet child believing in everything under your father's roof? Then comes the day of the Laodiceans, when you know you are wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked, and with the visage of a gruesome grieving ghost you go shuddering through nightmare life.
Jack Kerouac
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The one thing that we yearn for in our living days, that makes us sigh and groan and undergo sweet nauseas of all kinds, is the remembrance of some lost bliss that was probably experienced in the womb and can only be reproduced (though we hate to admit it) in death. But who wants to die?
Jack Kerouac
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In all this welter of women I still hadn't got one for myself, not that I was trying too hard, but sometimes I felt lonely to see everybody paired off and having a good time and all I did was curl up in my sleeping bag in the rosebushes and sigh and say bah. For me it was just red wine in my mouth and a pile of firewood
Jack Kerouac
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The cowboy music twanged in the roadhouse and carried across the fields, all sadness. It was all right with me. I kissed my baby and we put out the lights.
Jack Kerouac
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And I will die, and you will die, and we all will die, and even the stars will fade out one after another in time.
Jack Kerouac
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...and performing our one and noble function of the time, move.
Jack Kerouac
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You are the equal of the idol who has given you your inspiration
Jack Kerouac
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Forgive everyone for your own sins and be sure to tell them you love them which you do.
Jack Kerouac
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As far as I'm concerned the only thing to do is sit in a room and get drunk
Jack Kerouac
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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
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It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.
Jack Kerouac
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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.
Jack Kerouac
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I'm writing this book because we're all going to die.
Jack Kerouac
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the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.
Jack Kerouac
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I am young now and can look upon my body and soul with pride. But it will be mangled soon, and later it will begin to disintegrate, and then I shall die, and die conclusively. How can we face such a fact, and not live in fear?
Jack Kerouac