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A Fool Forgetting All The Ideals And Joys I Knew Before, In My Recent Years Of Drinking And Disappointment, What Does He Care If He Hasn't Got Any Money: He Doesn't Need Any Money, All He Needs Is His Rucksack With Those Little Plastic Bags Of Dried Food And A Good Pair Of Shoes And Off He Goes And Enjoys The Privileges Of A Millionaire In Surroundings Like This.

-Jack Kerouac

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A Fool Forgetting All

Jack Kerouac

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A Fool Forgetting All The Ideals And Joys I Knew Before, In My Recent Years Of Drinking And Disappointment, What Does He Care If He Hasn't Got Any Money: He Doesn't Need Any Money, All He Needs Is His Rucksack With Those Little Plastic Bags Of Dried Food And A Good Pair Of Shoes And Off He Goes And Enjoys The Privileges Of A Millionaire In Surroundings Like This.

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Something That You Feel Will Find Its Own Form.

It No Longer Makes Me Cry And Die And Tear Myself To See Her Go Because Everything Goes Away From Me Like That Now — Girls, Visions, Anything, Just In The Same Way And Forever And I Accept Lostness Forever.

...[the Photographer] Can Be Considered A Kind Of Disembodied Burrowing Eye, A Conspirator Against Time And Its Hammers. His Work, Print After Print Of It, Seems To Call To Be Shown Before The Decay Which It Portrays Flattens All... Here Are The Records Of The Age Before An Imminent Collapse.

He Had No Place He Could Stay In Without Getting Tired Of It And Because There Was Nowhere To Go But Everywhere, Keep Rolling Under The Stars.

Write What You Want Bottomless From Bottom Of The Mind.

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-by. But We Lean Forward To The Next Crazy Venture Beneath The Skies.

The Tree Looks Like A Dog, Barking At Heaven.

I Clearly Saw The Skeleton Underneath All This Show Of Personality What Is Left Of A Man And All His Pride But Bones?

Rest And Be Kind, You Don't Have To Prove Anything

Who Can Leap The World's Ties And Sit With Me Among White Clouds?

La Is The Loneliest And Most Brutal Of American Cities; Ny Gets God-awful Cold In The Winter But There's A Feeling Of Wacky Comradeship Somewhere In Some Streets. La Is A Jungle.

I Like Too Many Things And Get All Confused And Hung-up Running From One Falling Star To Another Till I Drop. This Is The Night, What It Does To You. I Had Nothing To Offer Anybody Except My Own Confusion.

I Woke Up As The Sun Was Reddening; And That Was The One Distinct Time In My Life, The Strangest Moment Of All, When I Didn't Know Who I Was - I Was Far Away From Home, Haunted And Tired With Travel, In A Cheap Hotel Room I'd Never Seen, Hearing The Hiss Of Steam Outside, And The Creak Of The Old Wood Of The Hotel, And Footsteps Upstairs, And All The Sad Sounds, And I Looked At The Cracked High Ceiling And Really Didn't Know Who I Was For About Fifteen Strange Seconds. I Wasn't Scared; I Was Just Somebody Else, Some Stranger, And My Whole Life Was A Haunted Life, The Life Of A Ghost.

The Happiness Consists In Realizing That It Is All A Great Strange Dream.

I Realized Either I Was Crazy Or The World Was Crazy; And I Picked On The World. And Of Course I Was Right.

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.

Happy. Just In My Swim Shorts, Barefooted, Wild-haired, In The Red Fire Dark, Singing, Swigging Wine, Spitting, Jumping, Running—that's The Way To Live. All Alone And Free In The Soft Sands Of The Beach By The Sigh Of The Sea Out There, With The Ma-wink Fallopian Virgin Warm Stars Reflecting On The Outer Channel Fluid Belly Waters. And If Your Cans Are Redhot And You Can't Hold Them In Your Hands, Just Use Good Old Railroad Gloves, That's All.

The Words Are Clear As In The Reflection Of The World On The Water. Therefore Write The Word At Once, Everywhere, From Now Till Your Hand Is Paralyzed, For There Will Be Your Work For God, Since You Can Not Work For God In Other Ways, And Would Not, & Don't Know How, Or Bend That Way, From Habit, & From Talent In The Use & Signification & Arrangement Of The Word.

Better To Sleep In An Uncomfortable Bed Free, Than Sleep In A Comfortable Bed Unfree.

Somewhere Along The Line, The Pearl Would Be Handed To Me.

Who Doesn't Feel Studious When He Doesn't Have A Girl With A Riviera Suntan?

I Realized These Were All The Snapshots Which Our Children Would Look At Someday With Wonder, Thinking Their Parents Had Lived Smooth, Well-ordered Lives And Got Up In The Morning To Walk Proudly On The Sidewalks Of Life, Never Dreaming The Raggedy Madness And Riot Of Our Actual Lives, Our Actual Night, The Hell Of It, The Senseless Emptiness.

You Can't Teach The Old Maestro A New Tune.

And Before Me Was The Great Raw Bulge And Bulk Of My American Continent; Somewhat Far Across, Gloomy, Crazy New York Was Throwing Up Its Cloud Of Dust And Brown Steam. There Is Something Brown And Holy About The East; And California Is White Like Washlines And Emptyheaded - At Least That's What I Thought Then.

And He Had A Nice Home In Ohio With Wife, Daughter, Christmas Tree, Two Cars, Garage, Lawn, Lawnmower, But He Couldn't Enjoy Any Of It Because He Really Wasn't Free. It Was Sadly True.

Pain Or Love Or Danger Makes You Real Again.

We Were All Delighted, We All Realized We Were Leaving Confusion And Nonsense Behind And Performing Our One And Noble Function Of The Time, Move.

When You Start Separating People From Their Rivers, What Have You Got? Bureaucracy!

Put Down The Pen Someone Else Gave You. No One Ever Drafted A Life Worth Living On Borrowed Ink.

Life Worth Living

Listen To The Silence Inside The Illusion Of The World, And You Will Remember The Lesson You Forgot

The Dream Is Already Ended And We're Already Awake In The Golden Eternity.

My Eyes Were Glued On Life And They Were Full Of Tears.

They Build Their Own Hells.

All Our Best Men Are Laughed At In This Nightmare Land.

I Wasn't Scared; I Was Just Somebody Else, Some Stranger, And My Whole Life Was A Haunted Life, The Life Of A Ghost.

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 -

The Details Are The Life Of It, I Insist, Say Everything On Your Mind, Don’t Hold Back, Don’t Analyze Or Anything As You Go Along, Say It Out.

Anybody Doesn't Like These Pitchers Don't Like Potry, See? Anybody Don't Like Potry Go Home See Television Shots Of Big Hatted Cowboys Being Tolerated By Kind Horses. Robert Frank, Swiss, Unobtrusive, Nice, With That Little Camera That He Raises And Snaps With One Hand He Sucked A Sad Poem Right Out Of America Onto Film, Taking Rank Among The Poets Of The World. To Robert Frank I Now Give This Message: You Got Eyes.

I Hope It Is True That A Man Can Die And Yet Not Only Live In Others But Give Them Life, And Not Only Life, But That Great Consciousness Of Life.

An Awful Realization That I Have Been Fooling Myself All My Life Thinking There Was A Next Thing To Do To Keep The Show Going And Actually I'm Just A Sick Clown And So Is Everybody Else

Aw I Don't Wanta Go To No Such Thing, I Just Wanta Drink In Alleys.'... But You'll Miss All That, Just For Some Old Wine.' There's Wisdom In Wine, Goddam It!' I Yelled. 'have A Shot!

It Was A Rainy Night. It Was The Myth Of The Rainy Night.

I Felt The Sensation Of Each Of The Directions I Mentally And Emotionally Turned Into Amazed At All The Possible Directions You Can Take With Different Motives That Come In Like It Can Make You A Different Person — I’ve Often Thought Of This Since Childhood Of Suppose Instead Of Going Up Columbus As I Usually Did I’d Turn Into Filbert Would Something Happen That At The Time Is Insignificant Enough But Would Be Like Enough To Influence My Whole Life In The End? — What’s In Store For Me In The Direction I Don’t Take?

Something Good Will Come Out Of All Things Yet — And It Will Be Golden And Eternal Just Like That.

I Nudged Myself Closer To The Ledge And Closed My Eyes And Thought 'oh What A Life This Is, Why Do We Have To Be Born In The First Place, And Only So We Can Have Our Poor Gentle Flesh Laid Out To Such Impossible Horrors As Huge Mountains And Rock And Empty Space,' And With Horror I Remembered The Famous Zen Saying, 'when You Get To The Top Of A Mountain, Keep Climbing.' The Saying Made My Hair Stand On End; It Had Been Such Cute Poetry Sitting On Alvah's Straw Mats.

Forgive Everyone For Your Own Sins And Be Sure To Tell Them You Love Them Which You Do.

I Could Hear Dean, Blissful And Blabbering And Frantically Rocking. Only A Guy Who's Spent Five Years In Jail Can Go To Such Maniacal Helpless Extremes; Beseeching At The Portals Of The Soft Source, Mad With A Completely Phsycial Realization Of The Origins Of Life-bliss; Blindly Seeking To Return The Way He Came

No Matter How You Travel, How 'successful' Your Tour, Or Foreshortened, You Always Learn Something And Learn To Change Your Thoughts.

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.

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.

And Silence Is The Golden Mountain

Genius Gives Birth, Talent Delivers. What Rembrandt Or Van Gogh Saw In The Night Can Never Be Seen Again. Born Writers Of The Future Are Amazed Already At What They're Seeing Now, What We'll All See In Time For The First Time, And Then See Imitated Many Times By Made Writers.

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.

Think What A Great World Revolution Will Take Place When ... [there Are] Millions Of Guys All Over The World With Rucksacks On Their Backs Tramping Around The Back Country.

I'd Sleep And Forget It; I Had My Own Life, My Own Sad And Ragged Life Forever.

The Unspeakable Visions Of The Individual.

Who Knows, My God, But That The Universe Is Not One Vast Sea Of Compassion Actually, The Veritable Holy Honey, Beneath All This Show Of Personality And Cruelty?

The Yard Was Full Of Tomato Plants About To Ripen, And Mint, Mint, Everything Smelling Of Mint, And One Fine Old Tree That I Loved To Sit Under On Those Cool Perfect Starry California October Nights Unmatched Anywhere In The World.

Sal, We Gotta Go And Never Stop Going 'till We Get There.' 'where We Going, Man?' 'i Don't Know But We Gotta Go.

The Golden Eternity Is { }

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?

Why Did I Allow Myself To Be Bored Ever In The Past And To Compensate For It Got High Or Drunk Or Rages Or All The Tricks People Have Because They Want Anything But Serene Understanding Of Just What There Is, Which Is After All So Much.

To The Children And The Innocent It's All The Same.

Besides, All My New York Friends Were In The Negative, Nightmare Position Of Putting Down Society And Giving Their Tired Bookish Or Political Or Psychoanalytical Reasons, But Dean Just Raced In Society, Eager For Bread And Love.

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.

Bop Began With Jazz But One Afternoon Somewhere On A Sidewalk Maybe 1939, 1940, Dizzy Gillespie Or Charlie Parker Or Thelonious Monk Was Walking Past A Men's Clothing Store On 42nd Street Or South Main In L.a. And From A Loudspeaker They Suddenly Heard A Wild Impossible Mistake In Jazz That Could Only Have Been Heard Inside Their Own Imaginary Head, And That Is A New Art. Bop.

They Were Like The Man With The Dungeon Stone And Gloom, Rising From The Underground, The Sordid Hipsters Of America, A New Beat Generation That I Was Slowly Joining.

I Was Halfway Across America, At The Dividing Line Between The East Of My Youth And The West Of My Future.

"what Do You Want Out Of Life?" I Asked, And I Used To Ask That All The Time Of Girls. "i Don't Know," She Said. "just Wait On Tables And Try To Get Along." She Yawned. I Put My Hand Over Her Mouth And Told Her Not To Yawn. I Tried To Tell Her How Excited I Was About Life And The Things We Could Do Together; Saying That, And Planning To Leave Denver In Two Days. She Turned Away Wearily. We Lay On Our Backs, Looking At The Ceiling And Wondering What God Had Wrought When He Made Life So Sad.

It's Only Through Form That We Can Realize Emptiness

My Life Is A Vast Inconsequential Epic.

Inconsequential

Genius Gives Birth, Talent Delivers. What Rembrandt Or Van Gogh Saw In The Night Can Never Be Seen Again.

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.

You Guys Are Going Somewhere Or Just Going?

Let Nature Do The Freezing And Frightening And Isolating In This World. Let Men Work And Love And Fight It Off.

Life Was Dense, Dark, Ancient. They Watched Dean, Serious And Insane At His Raving Wheel, With Eyes Of Hawks. All Had Their Hands Outstretched. They Had Come Down From The Back Mountains And Higher Places To Hold Forth Their Hands For Something They Thought Civilization Could Offer, And They Never Dreamed The Sadness And The Poor Broken Delusion Of It.

...we All Must Admit That Everything Is Fine And There's No Need In The World To Worry, And In Fact We Should Realize What It Would Mean To Us To Understand That We're Not Really Worried About Anything.

Whither Goest Thou, America, In Thy Shiny Car In The Night?

The Secret Of This Kind Of Climbing, Is Like Zen. Don't Think. Just Dance Along. It's The Easiest Thing In The World, Actually Easier Than Walking On Flat Ground Which Is Monotonous. The Cute Little Problems Present Themselves At Each Step And Yet You Don't Hesitate And You Find Yourself On Some Other Boulder You Picked Out For No Special Reason At All, Just Like Zen.~ Japhy

He Seems To Me To Be Headed For His Ideal Fate, Which Is Compulsive Psychosis Dashed With A Jigger Of Psychopathic Irresponsibility And Violence

I'm Not A Beatnik. I'm A Catholic.

The First Sip [of Tea] Is Joy, The Second Is Gladness, The Third Is Serenity, The Fourth Is Madness, The Fifth Is Ecstasy.

Mind Is The Maker, For No Reason At All, For All This Creation, Created To Fall.

A Fool Forgetting All The Ideals And Joys I Knew Before, In My Recent Years Of Drinking And Disappointment, What Does He Care If He Hasn't Got Any Money: He Doesn't Need Any Money, All He Needs Is His Rucksack With Those Little Plastic Bags Of Dried Food And A Good Pair Of Shoes And Off He Goes And Enjoys The Privileges Of A Millionaire In Surroundings Like This.

Ah, Life Is A Gate, A Way, A Path To Paradise Anyway, Why Not Live For Fun And Joy And Love Or Some Sort Of Girl By A Fireside, Why Not Go To Your Desire And Laugh.

Whenever Spring Comes To New York I Can't Stand The Suggestion Of The Land That Come Blowing Over The River From New Jersey And I've Got To Go. So I Went.

...most Of The Time We Were Alone And Mixing Up Our Souls Ever More And Ever More Till It Would Be Terribly Hard To Say Good-by.

My Aunt Once Said That The World Would Never Find Peace Until Men Fell At Their Women's Feet And Asked For Forgiveness.

Colleges Being Nothing But Grooming Schools For The Middle-class Non-identity Which Usually Finds Its Perfect Expression On The Outskirts Of The Campus In Rows Of Well-to-do Houses With Lawns And Television Sets In Each Living Room With Everybody Looking At The Same Thing And Thinking The Same Thing At The Same Time While The Japhies Of The World Go Prowling In The Wilderness To Hear The Voice Crying In The Wilderness, To Find The Ecstacy Of The Stars, To Find The Dark Mysterious Secret Of The Origin Of Faceless Wonderless Crapulous Civilization.

Here I Was At The End Of America...no More Land...and Nowhere Was Nowhere To Go But Back

Suppose We Suddenly Wake Up And See That What We Thought To Be This And That, Ain't This And That At All?

Beat Generation

At Night In This Part Of The West The Stars, As I Had Seen Them In Wyoming, Were As Big As Roman Candles And As Lonely As The Prince Who's Lost His Ancestral Home And Journeys Across The Spaces Trying To Find It Again, And Knows He Never Will.

On Soft Spring Nights I'll Stand In The Yard Under The Stars - Something Good Will Come Out Of All Things Yet - And It Will Be Golden And Eternal Just Like That - There's No Need To Say Another Word.

And The Stars Were Icicles Of Mockery

You Aren't Ever Going To Be Anything In This World Unless You Do What You Want To Do, When You Want To Do It--don't Plan Anything, Just Go Out And Do It.

The Sun Goes Down Long And Red. All The Magic Names Of The Valley Unrolled - Manteca, Madera, All The Rest. Soon It Got Dusk, A Grapy Dusk, A Purple Dusk Over Tangerine Groves And Long Melon Field; The Sun The Color Of Pressed Grapes, Slashed With Burgundy Red, The Fields The Color Of Love And Spanish Mysteries. I Stuck My Head Out The Window And Took Deep Breaths Of The Fragant Air. It Was The Most Beautiful Of All Moments.

It's Okay, Girl, We'll Make It Till The Sun Goes Down Forever. And Until Then What You Got To Lose But The Losing? We're Fallen Angels Who Didn't Believe That Nothing Means Nothing.

It’s Not That I Can’t Fall In Love. It’s Really That I Can’t Help Falling In Love With Too Many Things All At Once. So, You Must Understand Why I Can’t Distinguish Between What’s Platonic And What Isn’t, Because It’s All Too Much And Not Enough At The Same Time.

Falling In Love

I Am Writing This Book Because We're All Going To Die - In The Loneliness Of My Own Life, My Father Dead, My Brother Dead, My Mother Faraway, My Sister And My Wife Far Away, Nothing Here But My Own Tragic Hands That Once Were Guarded By A World, A Sweet Attention, That Now Are Left To Guide And Disappear Their Own Way Into The Common Dark Of All Our Deaths, Sleeping In Me Raw Bed, Alone And Stupid: With Just This One Pride And Consolation: My Broke Heart In The General Despair And Opened Up Inwards To The Lord, I Made A Supplication In This Dream

At Night I Closed My Eyes And Saw My Bones Threading The Mud Of My Grave.

Your Buddhism Has Made You Mean Ray And Makes You Even Afraid To Take Your Clothes Off For A Simple Healthy Orgy

Thinking Of The Stars Night After Night I Begin To Realize 'the Stars Are Words' And All The Innumerable Worlds In The Milky Way Are Words, And So Is This World Too. And I Realize That No Matter Where I Am, Whether In A Little Room Full Of Thought, Or In This Endless Universe Of Stars And Mountains, It’s All In My Mind.

Nothing Behind Me, Everything Ahead Of Me, As Is Ever So On The Road.

But They Need To Worry And Betray Time With Urgencies False And Otherwise, Purely Anxious And Whiny, Their Souls Really Won't Be At Peace Unless They Can Latch To An Established And Proven Worry And Having Once Found It They Assume Facial Expressions To Fit And Go With It, Which Is, You See, Unhappiness, And All The Time It All Flies By Them And They Know It And That Too Worries Them No End.

It's Good-bye. But We Lean Forward To The Next Crazy Venture Beneath The Skies

The Road Must Eventually Lead To The Whole World.

And Nobody Knows What’s Going To Happen To Anybody Besides The Forlorn Rags Of Growing Old

Between Incomprehensible And Incoherent Sits The Madhouse. I Am Not In The Madhouse.

Because I Cannot Write My Native Language And Have No Native Home Anymore, And Am Amazed By That Horrible Homelessness Of All French-canadian S Abroad In America.

Native Language

She Brooded And Bit Her Rich Lips: My Soul Began Its First Sink Into Her, Deep, Heady, Lost; Like Drowning In A Witches' Brew, Keltic, Sorcerous, Starlike.

It Always Makes Me Proud To Love The World Somehow- Hate's So Easy Compared.

...but I Preferred Reading The American Landscape As We Went Along. Every Bump, Rise, And Stretch In It Mystified My Longing.

Last Night I Walked Clear Down To Times Square & Just As I Arrived I Suddenly Realized I Was A Ghost - It Was My Ghost Walking On The Sidewalk.

And There In The Blue Air I Saw For The First Time, Far Off, The Great Snowy Tops Of The Rocky Mountains. I Had To Get To Denver At Once.

He Had Never Felt Anything Like That Before - Yet Somehow He Knew That From Now On He Would Always Feel Like That, Always, And Something Caught At His Throat As He Realized What A Strange Sad Adventure Life Might Get To Be, Strange And Sad And Still Much More Beautiful And Amazing Than He Could Ever Have Imagined Because It Was So Really, Strangely Sad.

Down In Denver, All I Did Was Die.

Let The Mind Beware, That Though The Flesh Be Bugged, The Circumstances Of Existence Are Pretty Glorious.

Cats Yawn Because They Realize That There's Nothing To Do.

Ah Japhy You Taught Me The Final Lesson Of Them All, You Can't Fall Off A Mountain.

No Fear Or Shame In The Dignity Of Yr Experience, Language & Knowledge

Contrary To The General Belief About Photography, You Don't Need Bright Sunlight: The Best Moodiest Pictures Are Taken In The Dim Light Of Almost Dusk, Or Of Rainy Days.

There Are Worse Things Than Being Mad.

My Fault, My Failure, Is Not In The Passions I Have, But In My Lack Of Control Of Them.

The Bartenders Are The Regular Band Of Jack, And The Heavenly Drummer Who Looks Up To The Sky With Blue Eyes, With A Beard, Is Wailing Beer-caps Of Bottles And Jamming On The Cash Register And Everything Is Going To The Beat - It's The Beat Generation, Its Béat, It's The Beat To Keep, It's The Beat Of The Heart, It's Being Beat And Down In The World And Like Oldtime Lowdown.

Swinging On Delicate Hinges The Autumn Leaf Almost Off The Stem.

I Have All The Time In The World From Life To Life To Do What Is To Do, To Do What Is Done, To Do The Timeless Doing.

We All Agree It's Too Big To Keep Up With, That We're Surrounded By Life, That We'll Never Understand It, So We Center It All In By Swigging Scotch From The Bottle And When It's Empty I Run Out Of The Car And Buy Another One, Period.

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?

The Air Was So Sweet In New Orleans It Seemed To Come In Soft Bandannas; And You Could Smell The River And Really Smell The People, And Mud, And Molasses, And Every Kind Of Tropical Exhalation, With Your Nose Suddenly Removed From The Dry Ices Of A Northern Winter.

What A Horror It Would Have Been If The World Was Real, Because If The World Was Real, It Would Be Immortal.

One Day I Will Find The Right Words, And They Will Be Simple.

It Was The Work Of The Quiet Mountains, This Torrent Of Purity At My Feet.

And The Story Of Love Is A Long Sad Tale Ending In Graves.

And Then We’ll All Go Off To Sweet Life, ‘cause Now Is The Time And We All Know Time!

Write In Recollection And Amazement For Yourself.

Galatea Was A Serious Girl. She Was Pale And Looked Like Tears All Over. Big Ed Passed His Hand Through His Hair And Said Hello. She Looked At Him Steadily. "where Have You Been? Why Did You Do This To Me?" And She Gave Dean A Dirty Look; She Knew The Score. Dean Paid Absolutely No Attention; What He Wanted Now Was Food; He Asked Jane If There Was Anything. The Confusion Began Right There.

Don't Tell Them Too Much About Your Soul. They're Waiting For Just That.

Don't Use The Phone. People Are Never Ready To Answer It. Use Poetry.

After All, A Homeless Man Has Reason To Cry, Everything In The World Is Pointed Against Him.

Don't Stop To Think Of The Words When You Do Stop, Just Stop To Think Of The Picture Better-and Let Your Mind Off Yourself In This Work.

I Spent My Entire Youth Writing Slowly With Revisions And Endless Rehashing Speculation And Deleting And Got So I Was Writing One Sentence A Day And The Sentence Had No Feeling. Goddamn It, Feeling Is What I Like In Art, Not Craftiness And The Hiding Of Feelings.

Cliches Are Truisms And All Truisms Are True

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.

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

To Think That So Much Comes To So Little, To Think That Life Is Really Short.

I Suddenly Began To Realize That Everybody In America Is A Natural-born Thief.

The Beauty Of Things Must Be That They End.

Details Are The Life Of Prose.

If You Dont [sic] Say What You Want, What's The Sense Of Writing?

I Felt Like Lying Down By The Side Of The Trail And Remembering It All

I'm Catholic And I Can't Commit Suicide, But I Plan To Drink Myself To Death.

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... People Began To Call Themselves Beatniks, Beats, Jazzniks, Bopniks, Bugniks And Finally I Was Called The "avatar" Of All This.

For Life Is Holy And Every Moment Is Precious.

John Clellon Holmes... And I Were Sitting Around Trying To Think Up The Meaning Of The Lost Generation And The Subsequent Existentialism And I Said 'you Know John, This Is Really A Beat Generation'; And He Leapt Up And Said, 'that's It, That's Right!'

Happy. Just In My Swim Shorts, Barefooted, Wild-haired, In The Red Fire Dark, Singing, Swigging Wine, Spitting, Jumping, Running - That's The Way To Live. All Alone And Free In The Soft Sands Of The Beach.

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.

Because In The End, You Won't Remember The Time You Spent Working In The Office Or Mowing Your Lawn. Climb That Goddamn Mountain

Struggle To Sketch The Flow That Already Exists Intact In Mind.

Ah, It Was A Fine Night, A Warm Night, A Wine-drinking Night, A Moony Night, And A Night To Hug Your Girl And Talk And Spit And Be Heavengoing.

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?

I Have The Right Ideas, But My Words Are Too... Complicated. I Need To Simplify Them, So That People Won't Get Lost In The Dark When They See And Hear Them. I Want Them To Shine Like Beacons Of Light In A World Of Overly Complicated Darkness. One Day I Will Find The Right Words, And They Will Be Simple.

And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks!

Beat Generation

I Saw That My Life Was A Vast Glowing Empty Page And I Could Do Anything I Wanted.

Scribbled Secret Notebooks, And Wild Typewritten Pages, For Yr Own Joy

I Like It Because Its Ugly

I'd Rather Hop Freights Around The Country And Cook My Food Out Of Tin Cans Over Wood Fires, Than Be Rich And Have A Home Or Work.

Is Virgin You Trying To Fathom Me

The Human Bones Are But Vain Lines Dawdling, The Whole Universe A Blank Mold Of Stars.

But, Outside Of Being A Sweet Little Girl, She Was Awfully Dumb And Capable Of Doing Horrible Things.

We Were On The Roof Of America And All We Could Do Was Yell

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.

Then It's Goodbye, Sangsara For Me Besides, Girls Aren't As Good As They Look And Samadhi Is Better Than You Think When It Starts In Hitting Your Head In With Buzz Of Glittergold Heaven's Angels, Wailing, Saying We've Been Waiting For You Since Morning, Jack Why Were You So Long Dallying In The Sooty Room? This Transcendental Brilliance Is The Better Part (of Nothingness I Sing) Okay. Quit. Mad. Stop.

The Only Truth Is Music.

Inspirational Music

Geniuses Can Be Scintillating And Geniuses Can Be Somber, But It's That Inescapable Sorrowful Depth That Shines Through-originality.

I'm Stuck Struggling In The Cold Water, And All I Can Do Is Grieve, Grieve, In The Hoar Necessitous Horror Of The Morning, Bitterly I Hate Myself, Bitterly It's Too Late Yet While I Feel Better I Still Feel Ephemeral And Unreal And Unable To Straighten My Thoughts Or Even Really Grieve, In Fact I Feel Too Stupid To Be Really Bitter, In Short I Don't Know What I'm Doing And I'm Being Told What To Do.

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?

Something Great Is About To Happen To Me: I'm About To Love Somebody Very Much.

So Long And Take It Easy, Because If You Start Taking Things Seriously, It Is The End Of You.

Nothing Ever Happened - Not Even This

I Promise I Shall Never Give Up, And That I'll Die Yelling & Laughing.

Because The Only People For Me Are The Mad Ones.

"what Do You Want Out Of Life?" I Asked, And I Used To Ask That All The Time Of Girls.

Writing At Least Is A Silent Meditation Even Though You’re Going A Hundred Miles An Hour.

I'd Also Gone Through An Entire Year Of Celibacy Based On My Feeling That Lust Was The Direct Cause Of Birth Which Was The Direct Cause Of Suffering And Death.

Suffering And Death

Dharma Bums Refusing To Subscribe To The General Demand That They Consume Production And Therefore Have To Work For The Privilege Of Consuming, All That Cramp They Didn't Really Want Anyway Such As Refrigerators, Tv Sets, Cars, At Least New Fancy Cars, Certain Hair Oils And Deodorants And General Junk You Finally Always See A Week Later In The Garbage Anyway, All Of Them Imprisoned In A System Of Work, Produce, Consume, Work, Produce, Consume.

It Is Not My Fault That Certain So-called Bohemian Elements Have Found In My Writings Something To Hang Their Peculiar Beatnik Theories On.

Roaring Dreams Take Place In A Perfectly Silent Mind. Now That We Know This, Throw The Raft Away.

The Empty Blue Sky Of Space Says 'all This Comes Back To Me, Then Goes Again, And Comes Back Again, Then Goes Again, And I Don't Care, It Still Belongs To Me

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.

And I Realize The Unbearable Anguish Of Insanity: How Uninformed People Can Be Thinking Insane People Are "happy," O God, In Fact It Was Irwin Garden Once Warned Me Not To Think The Madhouses Are Full Of "happy Nuts." (p. 200)

All Is Well, Practice Kindness, Heaven Is Nigh.

This Was A Manuscript Of The Night We Couldn’t Read.

In My Medicine Cabinet, The Winter Fly Has Died Of Old Age.

I See As Much As Doors'll Allow, Open Or Shut.

My Shoes Are Clean From Walking In The Rain.

Oh My God, Sociability Is Just A Big Smile And A Big Smile Is Nothing But Teeth, I Wish I Could Just Stay Up Here And Rest And Be Kind." But Somebody Brought Up Some Wine And That Started Me Off.

The Beat Generation, That Was A Vision That We Had, John Clellon Holmes And I, And Allen Ginsberg In An Even Wilder Way, In The Late Forties, Of A Generation Of Crazy, Illuminated Hipsters Suddenly Rising And Roaming America, Serious, Bumming And Hitchhiking Everywhere, Ragged, Beatific, Beautiful In An Ugly Graceful New Way.

Holding Up My Purring Cat To The Moon. I Sighed.

Practice Kindness All Day To Everybody And You Will Realize You're Already In Heaven Now.

You Are The Equal Of The Idol Who Has Given You Your Inspiration

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