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On the Road: the Original Scroll QUOTES

On the Road: the Original Scroll QUOTES

1 " In the hall itself the din of the music - for this is the real way to play a jukebox and what it was originally for - was so tremendous that it shattered Dean and Stan and me for a moment in the realization that we had never dared to play music as we wanted, and this was how loud we wanted. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

2 " This is the story of America. Everybody's doing what they think they're supposed to do. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

3 " All I wanted and all Neal wanted and all anybody wanted was some kind of penetration into the heart of things where, like in a womb, we could curl up and sleep the ecstatic sleep that Burroughs was experiencing with a good big mainline shot of M. and advertising executives in NY were experiencing with twelve Scotch & Sodas in Stouffers before they made the drunkard's train to Westchester---but without hangovers. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

4 " All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

5 " the only people that interest me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones that never yawn or say a commonplace thing.. but burn, burn, burn like roman candles across the night. Allen "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

6 " This can't go on all the time...all this franticness and jumping around. We've got to go someplace, find something. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

7 " There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

8 " The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

9 " My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

10 " They have worries, they're counting the miles, they're thinking about where to sleep tonight, how much money for gas, the weather, how they'll get there - and all the time they'll get there anyway, you see. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

11 " Things are so hard to figure out when you live from day to day in this feverish and silly world. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

12 " I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middle class philosophy out of it. I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

13 " I wished I was on the same bus as her. A pain stabbed my heart as it did everytime I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world of ours. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

14 " 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 , On the Road: the Original Scroll

15 " 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 , On the Road: the Original Scroll

16 " What's your road, man? - holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow. Where body how? "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

17 " You have absolutely no regard but yourself and your damned kicks. All you think about is what's hanging between your legs and how much money or fun you can get out of people and then you just throw them aside. Not only that but you're silly about it. It never occurs to you that life is serious and that there are people trying to make something decent out of it instead of just goofing all the time. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

18 " And just for a moment I had reached the point of ecstasy that I always wanted to reach, which was the complete step across chronological time into timeless shadows, and wonderment in the bleakness of the mortal realm, and the sensation of death kicking at my heels to move on, wiht a phantom dogging its own heels, and myself hurrying to a plank where all the angels dove off and flew into the holy void of uncreated emptiness, the potent and inconceivable radiancies shining in bright Mind Essence, innumerable lotus-lands falling open in the magic mothswarm of heaven. - Sal Paradise "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

19 " Here I was at the end of America...no more land...and nowhere was nowhere to go but back "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll

20 " 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. "

― Jack Kerouac , On the Road: the Original Scroll