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But Yet, But Yet, Woe, Woe Unto Those Who Think That The Beat Generation Means Crime, Delinquency, Immorality, Amorality ... Woe Unto Those Who Attack It On The Grounds That They Simply Don't Understand History And The Yearning Of Human Souls ... Woe In Fact Unto Those Who Make Evil Movies About The Beat Generation Where Innocent Housewives Are Raped By Beatniks! ... Woe Unto Those Who Spit On The Beat Generation, The Wind'll Blow It Back.

-Jack Kerouac

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But Yet, But Yet,

Jack Kerouac

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But Yet, But Yet, Woe, Woe Unto Those Who Think That The Beat Generation Means Crime, Delinquency, Immorality, Amorality ... Woe Unto Those Who Attack It On The Grounds That They Simply Don't Understand History And The Yearning Of Human Souls ... Woe In Fact Unto Those Who Make Evil Movies About The Beat Generation Where Innocent Housewives Are Raped By Beatniks! ... Woe Unto Those Who Spit On The Beat Generation, The Wind'll Blow It Back.

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

Bee, Why Are You Staring At Me? I Am Not A Flower??

The Four Inevitabilities: 1. Musty Books. 2. Uninteresting Nature. 3. Dull Existence. 4. Blank Nirvana, Buy That Boy.

Eager For Bread And Love.

Books, Shmooks, This Sickness Has Got Me Wishing If I Can Ever Get Out Of This I'll Gladly Become A Millworker And Shut My Big Mouth.

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

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?

The Truth Of The Matter Is We Don't Understand Our Women; We Blame On Them And It's All Our Fault.

I Don't Wanta Hear All Your Word Descriptions Of Words Words Words You Made Up All Winter, Man I Wanta Be Enlightened By Actions.

God Was Gone; It Was The Silence Of His Departure. It Was A Rainy Night. It Was The Myth Of The Rainy Night. Dean Was Popeyed With Awe. This Madness Would Lead Nowhere. I Didn't Know What Was Happening To Me, And I Suddenly Realized It Was Only The Tea That We Were Smoking; Dean Had Bought Some In New York. It Made Me Think That Everything Was About To Arrive - The Moment When You Know All And Everything Is Decided Forever.

The Golden Eternity Is { }

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.

How I Wished I'd Have Had A Camera Of My Own, A Mad Mental Camera That Could Register Pictorial Shots, Of The Photographic Artist Himself Prowling About For His Ultimate Shot - An Epic In Itself. (on The Road With Robert Frank, 1958)

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 Suddenly Discovered The Delight Of Rebellion.

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!'

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

And You Have Been Forever, And Will Be Forever, And All The Worrisome Smashings Of Your Foot On Innocent Cupboard Doors It Was Only The Void Pretending To Be A Man Pretending Not To Know The Void.

...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.

It'll Take You Eternities To Get Rid Of Me,' She Adds Sadly, Which Makes Me Jealous, I Want Her To Say I'll Never Get Rid Of Her - I Wanta Be Chased Till Eternity Till I Catch Her.

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.

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

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.

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

The Only People For Me Are The Mad Ones, The Ones Who Are Mad To Live, Mad To Talk, Mad To Be Saved.

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.

Our Radio Plays Rhythm And Blues As We Pass The Joint Back And Forth In Jutjawed Silence Both Looking Ahead With Big Private Thoughts Now So Vast We Can't Communicate Them Anymore And If We Tried It Would Take A Million Years And A Billion Books - Too Late, Too Late, The History Of Everything We've Seen Together And Separately Has Become A Library In Itself - The Shelves Pile Higher - They're Full Of Misty Documents Or Documents Of The Mist-.

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.

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

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.

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

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

I Didn't Know What To Say. I Felt Like Crying, Goddammit Everybody In The World Wants An Explanation For Your Acts And For Your Very Being.

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.

And As Far As I Can See The World Is Too Old For Us To Talk About It With Our New Words.

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?

Prison Is Where You Promise Yourself The Right To Live.

Pretty Girls Make Graves

You Can't Live In This World But There's Nowhere Else To Go.

"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.

One Night I Realized That When You Give People Understanding And Encouragement A Funny Little Meek Childish Look Abashes Their Eyes, No Matter What They've Been Doing They Weren't Sure It Was Right - Lambies All Over The World.

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

What Is He Aching To Do? What Are We All Aching To Do? What Do We Want?” She Didn’t Know. She Yawned. She Was Sleepy. It Was Too Much. Nobody Could Tell. Nobody Would Ever Tell. It Was All Over. She Was Eighteen And Most Lovely, And Lost.

The Truth Of The Matter Is, You Die, All You Do Is Die, And Yet You Live, Yes You Live, And That's No Harvard Lie.

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

I Took A Straight Picture That Made Me Look Like A Thirty-year-old Italian Who'd Kill Anybody Who Said Something Against His Mother.

Fear Life But Don't Die, Your Alone, Everybody's Alone, Oh Cody Pomeray You Can't Win You Can't Lose All Is Ephemeral All Is Hurt

Never Mistake Talking About Writing For Actual Writing.

Yeah," I Said, "but You're An Artist. You Don't Believe In Decency And Honesty And Gratitude. Where Shall We Eat?

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

Everything I Wrote Was True Because I Believed What I Saw.

But There's No Joy At All, People Say "oh Well He's Drunk And Happy Let Him Sleep It Off"--the Poor Drunkard Is *crying*--he's Crying For His Mother And Father And Great Brother And Great Friend, He's Crying For Help. (p.111)

His Friends Said, "why Do You Have That Ugly Thing Hanging There?" And Bull Said, "i Like It Because It's Ugly." All His Life Was In That Line.

You Can't Fight City Hall. It Keeps Changing Its Name.

As We Crossed The Colorado-utah Border I Saw God In The Sky In The Form Of Huge Gold Sunburning Clouds Above The Desert That Seemed To Point A Finger At Me And Say, "pass Here And Go On, You're On The Road To Heaven.

What's In Store For Me In The Direction I Don't Take?

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

And With Joy You Realize For The First Time "thinking's Just Like Not Thinking — So I Don't Have To Think Any More".

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.

You Don't Know What To Say To Me Because The Kingdom Is Within...flesh And Blood's Dream...so You Fly Now, Pay Later, All Of Us...i Mean Actually It's Pay Now, Fly Later

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.

And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks!

Beat Generation

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

All Day Long Wearing A Hat That Wasn't On My Head

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

Houses Are Full Of Things That Gather Dust

If Moderation Is A Fault, Then Indifference Is A Crime.

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.

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.

Rather, I Think One Should Write, As Nearly As Possible, As If He Were The First Person On Earth And Was Humbly And Sincerly Putting On Paper That Which He Saw And Experienced And Loved And Lost; What His Passing Thoughts Were And His Sorrows And Desires.

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

But Night Would Come And With It The Mountain Moon And The Lake Would Be Moon - Laned And I'd Go Out And Sit In The Grass And Meditate Facing West, Wishing There Were A Personal God In All This Impersonal Matter.

Be In Love With Your Life, Every Detail Of It.

Offer Them What They Secretly Want And They Of Course Immediately Become Panic-stricken.

Because Anybody Can Write, But Not Everybody Invents New Forms Of Writing. Gertrude Stein Invented A New Form Of Writing And Her Imitators Are Just "talents."

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.

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

I Realized That I Had Died And Been Reborn Numberless Times But Just Didn't Remember Because The Transitions From Life To Death And Back Are So Ghostly Easy, A Magical Action For Naught, Like Falling Asleep And Waking Up Again A Million Times, The Utter Casualness And Deep Ignorance Of It.

Will You Love Me In December As You Do In May?

I Don't Know, I Don't Care, And It Doesn't Make Any Difference.

I Am Always Thinking 'what Am I Doing Here? Is This The Way I Am Supposed To Feel?'

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.

The Bus Roared On. I Was Going Home In October. Everybody Goes Home In October.

Is Virgin You Trying To Fathom Me

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

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.

You'd Be Surprised How Little I Knew Even Up To Yesterday

I Was Amazed By The Fact That I Was Not The Only Writer Living, Not The Only Young Man "with A Locomotive In His Chest, And That's A Fact," Not The Only Youth With A Million Hungers And Not One Of Them Appeasable, Not The Only One Who Is Lonely Among Multitudes, And Does Not Know Why.

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.

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

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

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.

The Smog Was Heavy, My Eyes Were Weeping From It, The Sun Was Hot, The Air Stank, A Regular Hell Is L.a.

Parade My Trouble In Front Of You Guys? Make You Realize That My Heart Is Broken . . . That As Long As I Live I'll Have Chains Dragging Me Down To The Oceans Of Sad Tears That My Feet Are Wet In Already.

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

I Feel Guilty For Being A Member Of The Human Race.

It All Ends In Tears Anyway.

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

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

Life Worth Living

And This Is The Way A Novel Gets Written, In Ignorance, Fear, Sorrow, Madness, And A Kind Of Psychotic Happiness As An Incubator For The Wonders Being Born.

I Just Won't Sleep," I Decided. There Were So Many Other Interesting Things To Do.

Everything Is Perfect On The Street Again, The World Is Permeated With Roses Of Happiness All The Time, But None Of Us Know It. The Happiness Consists In Realizing That It Is All A Great Strange Dream.

In My Madness I Was Actually In Love With Her For The Few Hours It All Lasted; It Was The Same Unmistakable Ache And Stab Across The Mind, The Same Sighs, The Same Pain, And Above All The Same Reluctance And Fear To Approach.

I Loved The Way She Said 'la'; I Love The Way Everybody Says 'la' On The Coast; It's Their One And Only Golden Town When All Is Said And Done.

The More Ups And Downs, The More Joy I Feel. The Greater The Fear, The Greater The Happiness I Feel.

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

Maybe That's What Life Is... A Wink Of The Eye And Winking Stars.

The Closer You Get To Real Matter, Rock Air Fire And Wood, Boy, The More Spiritual The World Is.

-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.

I'm Writing This Book Because We're All Going To Die.

I Have Fallen In Love With You, God. Take Care Of Us All, One Way Or The Other.

Holy Flowers Floating In The Air, Were All These Tired Faces In The Dawn Of Jazz America.

I Had Nothing To Offer Anybody Except My Own Confusion.

I Was Surprised, As Always, Be How Easy The Act Of Leaving Was, And How Good It Felt. The World Was Suddenly Rich With Possibility.

Write In Recollection And Amazement For Yourself.

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

It's Pretty Amazing To See A Guy, While Steering At The Wheel, Suddenly Raise His Little 300 Dollar German Camera With One Hand And Snap Something That's On The Move In Front Of Him, And Through An Unwashed Windshield At That. (on The Road With Robert Frank, 1958)

...the Tale That's Told For No Other Reason But Companionship, Which Is Another (and My Favorite) Definition Of Literature, The Tale That's Told For Companionship And To Teach Something Religious, Of Religious Reverence, About Real Life, In This Real World Which Literature Should (and Here Does) Reflect.

Dean And I Both Swayed To The Rhythm And The It Of Our Final Excited Joy In Talking And Living To The Blank Traced End Of All Innumerable Riotous Angelic Particulars That Had Been Lurking In Our Souls All Our Lives.

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.

This Was Really The Way My Whole Road Experience Began, And The Things That Were To Come Are Too Fantastic Not To Tell.

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.

The Air Was Soft, The Stars So Fine, The Promise Of Every Cobbled Alley So Great, That I Thought I Was In A Dream.

Stick At It Like A Benni Addict

I Felt Like Lying Down By The Side Of The Trail And Remembering It All. The Woods Do That To You, They Always Look Familiar, Long Lost, Like The Face Of A Long-dead Relative, Like An Old Dream, Like A Piece Of Forgotten Song Drifting Across The Water, Most Of All Like Golden Eternities Of Past Childhood Or Past Manhood And All The Living And The Dying And The Heartbreak That Went On A Million Years Ago And The Clouds As They Pass Overhead Seem To Testify (by Their Own Lonesome Familiarity) To This Feeling.

We Wandered In A Frenzy And A Dream (301).

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?

Never Dreaming, Was I, Poor Jack Duluoz, That The Soul Is Dead. That From Heaven Grace Descends . . . No Doctor Pisspot Poorpail To Tell Me; No Example Inside My First And Only Skin. That Love Is The Heritage, And Cousin To Death. That The Only Love Can Only Be The First Love, The Only Death The Last, The Only Life Within, And The Only Word . . . Choked Forever.

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

I Came To A Point Where I Needed Solitude And Just Stop The Machine Of ‘thinking’ And ‘enjoying’ What They Call ‘living’, I Just Wanted To Lie In The Grass And Look At The Clouds.

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

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

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.

The Unspeakable Visions Of The Individual.

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.

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!

My Witness Is The Empty Sky.

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

A Fine Thing To Be Talking About Angels In This Day When Common Thieves Smash The Holy Rosaries Of Their Victims In The Street.

I Can't Think Of Anybody...who Knows The Sum And Substance Of What I Know And Feel And Cry About In My Secret Self All The Time When I Don't Feel Strong, The Sorrows Of Time And Personality, And Can Therefore On All Levels Make It All The Way With Me

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

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

In Our True Blissful Essence Of Mind Is Known That Everything Is Alright Forever And Forever And Forever...listen To The Silence Inside The Illusion Of The World, And You Will Remember The Lesson You Forgot, It Is All One Vast Awakened Thing. We Were Never Really Born, We Will Never Really Die. It Has Nothing To Do With The Imaginary Idea Of A Personal Self, Other Selves, Many Selves Everywhere: Self Is Only An Idea, A Mortal Idea. That Which Passes Into Everything Is One Thing. It's A Dream Already Ended.

Everything Is Ecstasy Inside. We Just Don't Know It Because Of Our Thinking-minds. But In Our True Blissful Essence Of Mind [it] Is Known That Everything Is Alright Forever And Forever And Forever.

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.

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.

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

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.

Don't Think Of Words When You Stop But To See Picture Better.

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

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.

They Build Their Own Hells.

Because 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.

Now The Mountains Were Getting That Pink Tinge, I Mean The Rocks, They Were Just Solid Rock Covered With The Atoms Of Dust Accumulated There Since Beginningless Time. In Fact I Was Afraid Of Those Jagged Monstrosities All Around And Over Our Heads. "they're So Silent!" I Said. "yeah Man, You Know To Me A Mountain Is A Buddha. Think Of The Patience, Hundreds Of Thousands Of Years Just Sitting There Bein Perfectly Perfectly Silent And Like Praying For All Living Creatures In That Silence And Just Waitin For Us To Stop All Our Frettin And Foolin.

The Tree Looks Like A Dog, Barking At Heaven.

I Petted The Dogs Who Didn't Argue With Me Ever. All Dogs Love God. They're Wiser Than Their Masters.

She Talks With A Broken Heart - Her Voice Lutes Brokenly Like A Heart Lost, Musically Too, Like In A Lost Grove, It's Almost Too Much To Bear Sometimes Like Some Fantastic Futuristic Jerry Southern Singer In A Nightclub Who Steps Up To The Mike In The Spotlight In Las Vegas But Doesn't Even Have To Sing, Just Talk, To Make Men Sigh And Women Wonder I Guess.

Our Battered Suitcases Were Piled On The Sidewalk Again; We Had Longer Ways To Go. But No Matter, The Road Is Life.

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

There Is A Blessedness Surely To Be Believed, And That Is That Everything Abides In Eternal Ecstasy, Now And Forever.

The Silence Is So Intense That You Can Hear Your Own Blood Roar In Your Ears But Louder Than That By Far Is The Mysterious Roar Which I Alwas Identify With The Roaring Of The Diamond Wisdom, The Mysterious Roar Of Silence Itself, Which Is A Great Shhhh Reminding You Of Something You've Seemed To Have Forgotten In The Stress Of Your Days Since Birth.

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

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

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.

One Man Practicing Kindness In The Wilderness Is Worth All The Temples This World Pulls.

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

And Never Really Thought I'd Amount To Anything. It Was Precisely What I Wanted The Whole World To Think; Then I Could Sneak In, If That's What They Wanted, And Sneak Out Again, Which I Did.

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.

Lying Mouth To Mouth, Kiss To Kiss In The Pillow Dark, Loin To Loin In Unbelievable Surrendering Sweetness So Distant From All Our Mental Fearful Abstractions It Makes You Wonder Why Men Have Termed God Antisexual Somehow (p. 148)

Paris Is A Woman But London Is An Independent Man Puffing His Pipe In A Pub.

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.

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?

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.

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

That's The Story Of My Life Rich Or Poor And Mostly Poor And Truly Poor.

Story Of My Life

All Is Well, Practice Kindness, Heaven Is Nigh.

We Lay On Our Backs Looking At The Ceiling And Wondering What God Had Wrought When He Made Life So Sad And Disinclined.

When You've Understood This Scripture, Throw It Away. If You Can't Understand This Scripture, Throw It Away. I Insist On Your Freedom.

Burroughs Is The Greatest Satirical Writer Since Jonathan Swift.

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

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.

The Taste Of Rain -- Why Kneel?

Man, Wow, There's So Many Things To Do, So Many Things To Write! How To Even Begin To Get It All Down And Without Modified Restraints And All Hung-up On Like Literary Inhibitions And Grammatical Fears.

My Life Is A Vast Inconsequential Epic.

Inconsequential

In Those Days He Really Didn't Know What He Was Talking About; That Is To Say, He Was A Young Jailkid All Hung-up On The Wonderful Possibilities Of Becoming A Real Intellectual, And He Liked To Talk In The Tone And Using The Words, But In A Jumbled Way, That He Had Heard From 'real Intellectuals.

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.

The Only Alternative To Sleeping Out, Hopping Freights, And Doing What I Wanted, I Saw In A Vision Would Be To Just Sit With A Hundred Other Patients In Front Of A Nice Television Set In A Madhouse, Where We Could Be "supervised."

Soon It Got Dusk, A Grapy Dusk, A Purple Dusk Over Tangerine Groves And Long Melon Fields; The Sun The Color Of Pressed Grapes, Slashed With Burgandy Red, The Fields The Color Of Love And Spanish Mysteries.

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

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

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.

Finding Nirvana Is Like Locating Silence.

I Swore I'd Be In Chicago Tomorrow, And Made Sure Of That, Taking A Bus To Chicago, Spending Most Of My Money, And Didn't Give A Damn, Just As Long As I'd Be In Chicago Tomorrow.

What Difference Does It Make After All?--anonymity In The World Of Men Is Better Than Fame In Heaven, For What’s Heaven? What’s Earth? All In The Mind.

Ray, What You Got To Do Is Go Climb A Mountain.

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.

And The Stars Were Icicles Of Mockery

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

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

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