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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

-Jack Kerouac

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In All This Welter

Jack Kerouac

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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

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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.

I Was Having A Wonderful Time And The Whole World Opened Up Before Me Because I Had No Dreams.

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.

My Witness Is The Empty Sky.

It's Only Through Form That We Can Realize Emptiness

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.

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.

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

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.

Beautiful Insane In The Rain

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

If You Tell A True Story, You Can't Be Wrong.

Prison Is Where You Promise Yourself The Right To Live.

I Have Been Writing My Heart Out All My Life, But Only Getting A Living Out Of It Now.... ... It's Not A Question Of The Merit Of Art, But A Question Of Spontaneity And Sincerity And Joy I Say. I Would Like Everybody In The World To Tell His Full Life Confession And Tell It His Own Way And Then We'd Have Something To Read In Our Old Age.

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

It Was All Completely Serious, All Completely Hallucinated, All Completely Happy.

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.

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

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

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

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 Beat Generation (coined In Playboy)

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

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

Once There Was Louis Armstrong Blowing His Beautiful Top In The Muds Of New Orleans; Before Him The Mad Musicians Who Had Paraded On Official Days And Broke Up Their Sousa Marches Into Ragtime. Then There Was Swing, And Roy Eldridge, Vigorous And Virile, Blasting The Horn For Everything It Had In Waves Of Power And Logic And Subtlety - Leaning Into It With Glittering Eyes And A Lovely Smile And Sending It Out Broadcast To Rock The Jazz World.

You Don't Realize What A Strain It Is On The Nerves To Write Or Think-of-writing All Day Long, And To Sleep Full Of Nervous Dreams, And To Wake Up Not Knowing Who One Is: This All Stems From Anxiety About Finishing The Book, About Time 'growing Short', Etc., And The Perpetual Strain Of Invention.

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.

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.

The Best Teacher Is Experience And Not Through Someone's Distorted Point Of View

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.

I'd Better Be A Poet Or Lay Down Dead.

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.

I'm Going To Marry My Novels And Have Little Short Stories For Children.

Some's Bastards, Some's Ain't. That's The Score.

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

We Agreed To Love Each Other Madly.

Love Each Other

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

Never Mistake Talking About Writing For Actual Writing.

My Karma Was To Be Born In America Where Nobody Has Any Fun Or Believes In Anything, Especially Freedom.

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

...notice How He Will Come To Manhood With His Own Particular Soul Bespeaking Itself Through The Windows Which Are His Eyes, And Such Lovely Eyes Surely Do Prophesy And Indicate The Loveliest Of Souls.

...[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.

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 -

And What Does The Rain Say At Night In A Small Town, What Does The Rain Have To Say? Who Walks Beneath Dripping Melancholy Branches Listening To The Rain? Who Is There In The Rain’s Million-needled Blurring Splash, Listening To The Grave Music Of The Rain At Night, September Rain, September Rain, So Dark And Soft? Who Is There Listening To Steady Level Roaring Rain All Around, Brooding And Listening And Waiting, In The Rain-washed, Rain-twinkled Dark Of Night?

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

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

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.

One Fast Move Or I'm Gone,' I Realize, Gone The Way Of The Last Three Years Of Drunken Hopelessness Which Is A Physical And Spiritual And Metaphysical Hopelessness You Can't Learn In School No Matter How Many Books On Existentialism Or Pessimisn You Read, Or How Many Jugs Of Vision-producing Ayahuasca Drink, Or Mescaline Take, Or Peyote Goop Up With -

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.

Hell Man, I Know Very Well You Didn't Come To Me Only To Want To Become A Writer, And After All What Do I Really Know About It Except That You've Got To Stick To It With The Energy Of A Benny Addict.

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

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

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

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

I Had Nothing To Offer Anybody Except My Own Confusion.

The Unspeakable Visions Of The Individual.

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

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?

No Time For Poetry But Exactly What Is.

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.

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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.

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 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.

..and That Was The One Distinct Time In My Life, The Strangest Moment Of All, When I Didnt Know Who I Was

Walking On Water Wasn't Built In A Day.

Walking On Water

The Fact That Everybody In The World Dreams Every Night Ties All Mankind Together.

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

...do You Think God Made The World To Amuse Himself Because He Was Bored? Because If So He Would Have To Be Mean.

And I Said, 'that Last Thing Is What You Can't Get, Carlo. Nobody Can Get To That Last Thing. We Keep On Living In Hopes Of Catching It Once And For All.

Genius Gives Birth, Talent Delivers.

No Fear Or Shame In The Dignity Of Your Experience, Language, And Knowledge.

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

February Dawn -- Frost On The Path Where I Paced All Winter.

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You Seek Identity In The Midst Of Indistinguishab Le Chaos, In Sprawling Nameless Reality.

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?

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.

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Life Must Be Rich And Full Of Loving--it's No Good Otherwise, No Good At All, For Anyone.

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.

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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?

We Are Nothing. - Tomorrow We May Be Die. We Are Nothing. - You And Me.

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

As Early Pioneers In The Knowing, That When You Lose Your Reason, You Attain Highest Perfect Knowing.

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

Live, Travel, Adventure, Bless, And Don't Be Sorry.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Burroughs Is The Greatest Satirical Writer Since Jonathan Swift. . . . The Net Result Of Naked Lunch Will Be To Make People Shudder At Their Own Lies, Will Be To Make Them Open Up And Be Straight With One Another. Swift And Rabelais And Sterne Accomplished A Step In That Direction, And Burroughs Another.

The Taste Of Rain -- Why Kneel?

Great Things Are Not Accomplished By Those Who Yield To Trends And Fads And Popular Opinion.

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

Be Crazy Dumbsaint Of The Mind.

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

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.

The Tree Looks Like A Dog, Barking At Heaven.

Things Are So Hard To Figure Out When You Live From Day To Day In This Feverish And Silly World.

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.

I'll Go To The South Of Sicily In The Winter, And Paint Memories Of Arles – I'll Buy A Piano And Mozart Me That – I'll Write Long Sad Tales About People In The Legend Of My Life – This Part Is My Part Of The Movie, Let's Hear Yours

As Far As I'm Concerned The Only Thing To Do Is Sit In A Room And Get Drunk

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

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.'

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?

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

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.

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

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

There Is Universal Substance Which Is Divine Substance Because Where Else Can It Be?

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

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

Details Are The Life Of Prose.

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

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.

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!'

Houses Are Full Of Things That Gather Dust

Absolutely No Way To Escape Enigmans.

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

The Only Truth Is Music.

Inspirational Music

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.

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

The Cause Of The World's Woe Is Birth, The Cure Of The World's Woe Is A Bent Stick.

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.

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)

As I Grew Older I Became A Drunk. Why? Because I Like Ecstasy Of The Mind.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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 Pictured Myself In A Denver Bar That Night, With All The Gang, And In Their Eyes I Would Be Strange And Ragged And Like The Prophet Who Has Walked Across The Land To Bring The Dark Word, And The Only Word I Had Was 'wow!

It Made Me Think That Everything Was About To Arrive - The Moment When You Know All And Everything Is Decided Forever.

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

It Ain't Whatcha Write, It's The Way Atcha Write It.

Inspiration To Write

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.

I Want To Marry A [guy], So I Can Rest My Soul With [him] Till We Both Get Old. This Can't Go On All The Time-- All This Franticness And Jumping Around. We've Got To Go Someplace, Find Something.

It Seemed Like A Matter Of Minutes When We Began Rolling In The Foothills Before Oakland And Suddenly Reached A Height And Saw Stretched Out Ahead Of Us The Fabulous White City Of San Francisco On Her Eleven Mystic Hills With The Blue Pacific And Its Advancing Wall Of Potato-patch Fog Beyond, And Smoke And Goldenness In The Late Afternoon Of Time.

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.

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

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.

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

Down In Denver, All I Did Was Die.

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

The Fact Was I Had The Vision... I Think Everyone Has... What We Lack Is The Method.

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

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

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

Cliches Are Truisms And All Truisms Are True

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.

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.

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

...and Performing Our One And Noble Function Of The Time, Move.

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

I'm Right There, Swimming The River Of Hardships But I Know How To Swim.

Nothing Ever Happened - Not Even This

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

While Looking For The Light, You May Suddenly Be Devoured By The Darkness And Find The True Light

All The Souls To Explore! - It's Not So Necessary To Love, Really, As It Is To Settle Something Deep With All Of Those Who Really Matter. Love And Hate Are The Same Things, Differently Sifted Through Personal... Pride, Or What Have You... Personal Pride Or Even Just Personal-ness.

For The First Time In My Life The Weather Was Not Something That Touched Me, That Caressed Me, Froze Or Sweated Me, But Became Me.

Pain Or Love Or Danger Makes You Real Again.

They Build Their Own Hells.

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.

I'd Rather Be Thin Than Famous But I'm Fat Paste That In Your Broadway Show

Avoid The World, It's Just A Lot Of Dust And Drag And Means Nothing In The End.

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.

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

Stick At It Like A Benni Addict

Boys And Girls In America Have Such A Sad Time Together; Sophistication Demands That They Submit To Sex Immediately Without Proper Preliminary Talk. Not Courting Talk - Real Straight Talk About Souls, For Life Is Holy And Every Moment Is Precious.

Burroughs Is The Greatest Satirical Writer Since Jonathan Swift.

The Whole Mad Swirl Of Everything That Was To Come Began Then.

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.

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

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

And When The Fog's Over And The Stars And The Moon Come Out At Night It'll Be A Beautiful Sight.

The Silence Was An Intense Roar.

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

So I Rushed Past The Pretty Girls, And The Prettiest Girls In The World Live In Des Moines.

For Life Is Holy And Every Moment Is Precious.

I Was A Man Of The Earth, Precisely As I Had Dreamed I Would Be.

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.

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Carl Clinton Van Doren

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