74 quotes
Your art is the Holy Ghost blowing through your soul.
"What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? — it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."
On the Road (1957)
So long and take it easy, because if you start taking things seriously, it is the end of you.
Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings (1999)
You can't fight City Hall. It keeps changing its name.
The happiness consists in realizing that it is all a great strange dream.
Lonesome Traveler (1960)
Sociability is just a big smile, and a big smile is nothing but teeth.
The Dharma Bums (1958)
I feel guilty for being a member of the human race.
Big Sur (1962)
Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
I went one afternoon to the church of my childhood and had a vision of what I must have really meant with "Beat"... the vision of the word Beat as being to mean beatific...
I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.
On the Road (1957)
My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. I'm a wretch. But I love, love.
Satori in Paris (1966)
A sociable smile is nothing but teeth.
Desolation Angels (1965)
I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all.
The Dharma Bums (1958)
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.
Some of the Dharma (1997)
There's your Karma ripe as peaches.
Desolation Angels (1965)
Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world
Literature is no longer Necessary Teaching is left.
Some of the Dharma (1997)
A man who allows wild passion to arise within, himself burns his heart, then after burning adds the wind that thereto which ignites the fire again, or not, as the case may be.
Some of the Dharma (1997)
Then I added "Blah," with a little grin, because I knew that shack and that mountain would understand what that meant, and turned and went on down the trail back to this world.
The Dharma Bums (1958)
I want to work in revelations, not just spin silly tales for money. I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down.