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

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

Understanding the Quote: "i clearly saw the skeleton underneath all this show of personality what..."

This quote by Jack Kerouac reflects deeply on the theme of pride. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Pride, Men, Skeletons, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Jack Kerouac interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac is celebrated for insightful thoughts on pride and men. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Topic
Pride
Men
Skeletons
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Always Pull Back-and See How Silly We Must Look To God.
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Listen To The Silence Inside The Illusion Of The World, And You Will Remember The Lesson You Forgot
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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.
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I Petted The Dogs Who Didn't Argue With Me Ever. All Dogs Love God. They're Wiser Than Their Masters.
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Who Can Leap The World's Ties And Sit With Me Among White Clouds?
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La Is The Loneliest And Most Brutal Of American Cities.
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And The Story Of Love Is A Long Sad Tale Ending In Graves.
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The Page Is Long, Blank, And Full Of Truth. When I Am Through With It, It Shall Probably Be Long, Full, And Empty With Words.
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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.
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Holy Flowers Floating In The Air, Were All These Tired Faces In The Dawn Of Jazz America.
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It Made Me Think That Everything Was About To Arrive - The Moment When You Know All And Everything Is Decided Forever.
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We Are Nothing. - Tomorrow We May Be Die. We Are Nothing. - You And Me.
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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.
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-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.
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Our Battered Suitcases Were Piled On The Sidewalk Again; We Had Longer Ways To Go. But No Matter, The Road Is Life.
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What A Horror It Would Have Been If The World Was Real, Because If The World Was Real, It Would Be Immortal.
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Passion
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October
Going Home
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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.
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America
Thieves
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Running
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Wine
And Still The Void Is Still And'll Never Move - But I Will Be The Void, Moving Without Having Moved.
Moving
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Stills
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Hot
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They Build Their Own Hells.
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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?
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Waiting
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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.
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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.
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The Whole Mad Swirl Of Everything That Was To Come Began Then.
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Flames
Forever
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Dream
Book
Writing
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Wisdom
Sleep
Interesting
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Girl
Wisdom
Want
One Day I Will Find The Right Words, And They Will Be Simple.
Life
Wisdom
Writing
Great Things Are Not Accomplished By Those Who Yield To Trends And Fads And Popular Opinion.
Inspirational
Life
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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.
Travel
Stars
Tired
I Don't Know, I Don't Care, And It Doesn't Make Any Difference.
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Differences
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Good Will
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Tears
Ends
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Wisdom
Ends
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Goodbye
Morning
...do You Think God Made The World To Amuse Himself Because He Was Bored? Because If So He Would Have To Be Mean.
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Thinking
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All Day Long Wearing A Hat That Wasn't On My Head
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Hats
Swinging On Delicate Hinges The Autumn Leaf Almost Off The Stem.
Fall
Autumn
Leafs
Down On The Lake Rosy Reflections Of Celestial Vapor Appeared, And I Said, "god, I Love You" And Looked To The Sky And Really Meant It. "i Have Fallen In Love With You, God. Take Care Of Us All, One Way Or The Other." To The Children And The Innocent It's All The Same.
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Faith
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No Fear Or Shame In The Dignity Of Yr Experience, Language & Knowledge
Writing
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Fighting
Cities
Names
Don't Think Of Words When You Stop But To See Picture Better.
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Vision
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Golden
Eternity
Scribbled Secret Notebooks, And Wild Typewritten Pages, For Yr Own Joy
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It Was A Rainy Night. It Was The Myth Of The Rainy Night.
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Myth
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Want
Plans
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.
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Thinking
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.
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Nice
Home
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Travel
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And As Far As I Can See The World Is Too Old For Us To Talk About It With Our New Words.
World
New Words
I Can
I Ate Apple Pie And Ice Cream—it Was Getting Better As I Got Deeper Into Iowa, The Pie Bigger, The Ice Cream Richer. There Were The Most Beautiful Bevies Of Girls Everywhere I Looked In Des Moines That Afternoon—they Were Coming Home From High School—but I Had No Time For Thoughts Like That…so I Rushed Past The Pretty Girls, And The Prettiest Girls In The World Live In Des Moines.
Beautiful
Girl
Home
Burroughs Is The Greatest Satirical Writer Since Jonathan Swift.
Satirical
Burroughs
But That's Alright Because Now Everything'll Be Alright & We'll Soothe The Forever Boys & Girls & Before We're Thru We'll Find A Name For This Goddam Golden Eternity & Tell A Story Too
Girl
Boys
Names
Life Is Life, And Kind Is Kind
Kind
Life Is
Vanity Of Vanities… All Is Vanity.’ You Kill Yourself To Get To The Grave. Especially You Kill Yourself To Get To The Grave Before You Die; And The Name Of The Grave Is ‘success’, The Name Of That Grave Is Hullabullo Boom Boom Horseshit.
Vanity
Names
Graves
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.
Years
Suffering And Death
Feelings
My Aunt Once Said That The World Would Never Find Peace Until Men Fell At Their Women's Feet And Asked For Forgiveness.
Wisdom
Aunt
Men
Mind Is The Maker, For No Reason At All, For All This Creation, Created To Fall.
Fall
Mind
Creation
The Golden Eternity Is { }
Golden
Eternity
Will You Love Me In December As You Do In May?
Love
Wisdom
May
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.
Hipster
Men
America
After All, A Homeless Man Has Reason To Cry, Everything In The World Is Pointed Against Him.
Men
World
Cry
I Rather Like The Idea Of Having All My Hours To Myself: Eating A Fudge Sundae, Watching A Movie, Sleeping On My Couch, Singing In The Bathroom, Studying The Woods, Kidding Around With A Girl, Playing Cards Lazily - All Kinds Of Stuff That American Brands 'shiftless.'
Girl
Sleep
Ice Cream
So I Rushed Past The Pretty Girls, And The Prettiest Girls In The World Live In Des Moines.
Girl
Past
World
Struggle To Sketch The Flow That Already Exists Intact In Mind.
Struggle
Writing
Mind
Remove Literary, Grammatical And Syntactical Inhibition.
Remove
Inhibitions
I'm Right There, Swimming The River Of Hardships But I Know How To Swim.
Swimming
Rivers
Hardship
There Was Nothing To Talk About Anymore. The Only Thing To Do Was Go.
Travel
Things To Do
...and Performing Our One And Noble Function Of The Time, Move.
Moving
Noble
Function
The Air Was Soft, The Stars So Fine, The Promise Of Every Cobbled Alley So Great, That I Thought I Was In A Dream.
Dream
Stars
Air
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
Thinking
Sick
Realization
All I Wanted To Do Was Sneak Out Into The Night And Disappear Somewhere, And Go And Find Out What Everybody Was Doing All Over The Country.
Country
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Disappear
The Silence Was An Intense Roar.
Silence
Intense
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.
Girl
Wisdom
Drinking
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
Strong
Thinking
Self
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.
Silly
Want
Belief
All Of Life Is A Foreign Country.
Life
Country
Travel
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
Moving
Fall
Angel
A Pain Stabbed My Heart As It Did Every Time I Saw A Girl I Loved Who Was Going The Opposite Direction In This Too-big World.
Life
Girl
Wisdom
Desolation, Desolation, I Owe So Much To Desolation.
Desolation
We Should Be Wondering Tonight, "is There A World?" But I Could Go And Talk On 5, 10, 20 Minutes About Is There A World, Because There Is Really No World, Cause Sometimes I'm Walkin' On The Ground And I See Right Through The Ground. And There Is No World. And You'll Find Out.
Tonight
World
Causes
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.
Book
Wish
Mouths
This Was Really The Way My Whole Road Experience Began, And The Things That Were To Come Are Too Fantastic Not To Tell.
Way
Fantastic
Whole
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.
Dream
Essence
Ideas
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.
Passion
Heart
Men
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
Too Much
Helping
You'd Be Surprised How Little I Knew Even Up To Yesterday
Wisdom
Yesterday
Littles
Believe That The World Is An Ethereal Flower, And Ye Live.
Believe
Flower
World
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.
Cities
Long
Giving
I Was Having A Wonderful Time And The Whole World Opened Up Before Me Because I Had No Dreams.
Dream
World
Wonderful
I Was A Man Of The Earth, Precisely As I Had Dreamed I Would Be.
Men
Would Be
Earth
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.
Morning
Hate
Stupid
The Only Truth Is Music.
Music
Wisdom
Inspirational Music
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.
Stars
Fades
Dies
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.
Sadness
Eye
Dark
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.
Children
Men
Civilization
It Is Not My Fault That Certain So-called Bohemian Elements Have Found In My Writings Something To Hang Their Peculiar Beatnik Theories On.
Writing
Peculiar
Elements
What Does It Mean That I Am In This Endless Universe, Thinking That I'm A Man Sitting Under The Stars On The Terrace Of The Earth, But Actually Empty And Awake Throughout The Emptiness And Awakedness Of Everything? It Means That I'm Empty And Awake, That I Know I'm Empty And Awake, And That There's No Difference Between Me And Anything Else.
Stars
Mean
Men
Cliches Are Truisms And All Truisms Are True
Cliche
Truism
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.
Mean
Men
Thinking
My Life Is A Vast Inconsequential Epic.
Epic
Life Is
Inconsequential
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.
Love
Life
Girl
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.
New York
Spring
Land
I Was Suddenly Left With Nothing In My Hands But A Handful Of Crazy Stars.
Stars
Crazy
Hands
There's Wisdom In Wine.
Wine
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.
Heart
Eye
Beer
As Early Pioneers In The Knowing, That When You Lose Your Reason, You Attain Highest Perfect Knowing.
Knowing
Perfect
Pioneers
Listen Closely... The Eternal Hush Of Silence Goes On And On Throughout All This, And Has Been Going On, And Will Go On And On. This Is Because The World Is Nothing But A Dream And Is Just Thought Of And The Everlasting Eternity Pays No Attention To It.
Dream
Silence
Attention
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.
Horse
Nice
Eye
Jumping From Boulder To Boulder And Never Falling, With A Heavy Pack, Is Easier Than It Sounds; You Just Can't Fall When You Get Into The Rhythm Of The Dance.
Fall
Jumping
Boulders
Details Are The Life Of Prose.
Writing
Details
Prose
The Best Teacher Is Experience And Not Through Someone's Distorted Point Of View
Wisdom
Teacher
Views
Her Little Shoulders Drove Me Mad; I Hugged Her And Hugged Her. And She Loved It. 'i Love Love,' She Said, Closing Her Eyes. I Promised Her Beautiful Love. I Gloated Over Her. Our Stories Were Told; We Subsided Into Silence And Sweet Anticipatory Thoughts. It Was As Simple As That. You Could Have All Your Peaches And Bettys And Marylous And Ritas And Camilles And Inezes In This World; This Was My Girl And My Kind Of Girlsoul, And I Told Her That.
Beautiful
Girl
Sweet
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.
Heart
Men
Vegas
I Was Halfway Across America, At The Dividing Line Between The East Of My Youth And The West Of My Future.
America
East
Lines
Sometimes I’d Get Mad Because Things Didn’t Work Out So Well, I’d Spoil A Flapjack, Or Slip In The Snowfield While Getting Water, Or One Time My Shovel Went Sailing Down Into The Gorge, And I’d Be So Mad I’d Want To Bite The Mountaintops And Would Come In The Shack And Kick The Cupboard And Hurt My Toe. But Let The Mind Beware, Though The Flesh Be Bugged, The Circumstances Of Existence Are Pretty Glorious.
Hurt
Mad
Water
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!
Wine
Missing
Drink
Practice Kindness All Day To Everybody And You Will Realize You're Already In Heaven Now.
Kindness
Practice
Heaven
No Matter How You Travel, How 'successful' Your Tour, Or Foreshortened, You Always Learn Something And Learn To Change Your Thoughts.
Travel
Successful
Matter
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.
Girl
Believe
Mean
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
World
Want
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.
Stars
School
Dark
If Critics Say Your Work Stinks It's Because They Want It To Stink And They Can Make It Stink By Scaring You Into Conformity With Their Comfortable Little Standards. Standards So Low That They Can No Longer Be Considered "dangerous" But Set In Place In Their Compartmental Understandings.
Wisdom
Art
Powerful
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