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Somebody Had Tipped The American Continent Like A Pinball Machine And All The Goofballs Had Come Rolling To La In The Southwest Corner. I Cried For All Of Us. There Was No End To The American Sadness And The American Madness. Someday We'll All Start Laughing And Roll On The Ground When We Realize How Funny It's Been.

-Jack Kerouac

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Somebody Had Tipped The

Jack Kerouac

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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.

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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.

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.

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

Is Virgin You Trying To Fathom Me

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.

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.

If You Own A Rug You Own Too Much.

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

I Was Suddenly Left With Nothing In My Hands But A Handful Of Crazy Stars.

But On Top Of All That, The Feelings About Princess, 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 And I Had Really No Lie Come To A Point Where I Regarded Lust As Offensive And Even Cruel. "pretty Girls Make Graves," Was My Saying, Whenever I'd Had To Turn My Head Around Involuntarily To Stare At The Incomparable Pretties Of Indian Mexico.

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

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

I Mean, Why On Earth (outside Sickness And Hangovers) Aren't People Continually Drunk? I Want Ecstasy Of The Mind All The 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.

Genius Gives Birth, Talent Delivers.

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.

Mainly I've Been Back To My Books And Writings And Being Nice And Quiet And Lazy. As I'm Writing This, The Radio Says There's A Foot Of Snow Falling On Long Island. I Really Love Snow And Wish I Could Take A Long Walk In It Right Now.

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.

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

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

Prison Is Where You Promise Yourself The Right To Live.

The Bus Roared Through Indiana Cornfields That Night; The Moon Illuminated The Ghostly Gathered Husks; It Was Almost Halloween. I Made The Acquaintance Of A Girl And We Necked All The Way To Indianapolis. She Was Nearsighted. When We Got Off To Eat I Had To Lead Her By The Hand To The Lunch Counter. She Bought My Meals; My Sandwiches Were All Gone. In Exchange I Told Her Long Stories.

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.

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

Way Far Back In The Beginning Of The World Was The Whirlwind Warning That We Could All Be Blown Away Like Chips And Cry- Men With Tired Eyes Realize It Now, And Wait To Deform And Decay- With Maybe They Have The Power Of Love Yet In Their Hearts Just The Same, I Just Don't Know What That Word Means Anymore- All I Want Is An Ice Cream Cone

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

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.

Rocks Are Space, And Space Is Illusion.

Because The Only People For Me Are The Mad Ones.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Mankind Will Someday Realize That We Are Actually In Contact With The Dead And With The Other World, Whatever It Is; Right Now We Could Predict, If We Only Exerted Enough Mental Will, What Is Going To Happen Within The Next Hundred Years And Be Able To Take Steps To Avoid All Kinds Of Catastrophes. When A Man Dies He Undergoes A Mutation In His Brain That We Know Nothing About Now But Which Will Be Very Clear Someday If Scientists Get On The Ball. The Bastards Right Now Are Only Interested In Seeing If They Can Blow Up The World.

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.

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."

We Turned At A Dozen Paces, For Love Is A Duel, And Looked At Each Other For The Last Time.

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.

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.

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

I Promise I Shall Never Give Up, And That I'll Die Yelling And Laughing, And That Until Then I'll Rush Around This World I Insist Is Holy And Pull At Everyone's Lapel And Make Them Confess To Me And To All.

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

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

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

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

The Beauty Of Things Must Be That They End.

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

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.

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

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

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

I Want A Blaze Of Light To Flame In Me Forever In A Timeless, Dear Love Of Everything. And Why Should I Pretend To Want Anything Else?

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

Oftentimes An Originator Of New Language Forms Is Called 'pretentious' By Jealous Talents. But It Ain’t Whatcha Write, It’s The Way Atcha Write 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.

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.

Work From Pithy Middle Eye Out, Swimming In Language Sea.

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.

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

All Is Well, Practice Kindness, Heaven Is Nigh.

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

Story Of My Life

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

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

Finding Nirvana Is Like Locating Silence.

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.

The Golden Eternity Is { }

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

It's Hard To Explain And Best Thing To Do Is Not Be False.

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

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.

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

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

How Clear The Realization One Is Going Mad -- The Mind Has A Silence, Nothing Happens In The Physique, Urine Gathers In Your Loins, Your Ribs Contract.

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.

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

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

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

Your Mind Makes Out The Orange By Seeing It, Hearing It, Touching It, Smelling It, Tasting It And Thinking About It But Without This Mind, You Call It, The Orange Would Not Be Seen Or Heard Or Smelled Or Tasted Or Even Mentally Noticed, It's Actually, That Orange, Depending On Your Mind To Exist! Don't You See That? By Itself It's A No-thing, It's Really Mental, It's Seen Only Of Your Mind. In Other Words It's Empty And Awake.

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

There Was Nothing To Talk About Anymore. The Only Thing To Do Was Go.

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.

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

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

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

We Tiptoed Around Each Other Like Heartbreaking New Friends.

Sure Baby, Mañana. It Was Always Mañana. For The Next Few Weeks That Was All I Heard––mañana A Lovely Word And One That Probably Means Heaven.

Believe That The World Is An Ethereal Flower, And Ye Live.

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.

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

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.

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

Desolation, Desolation, I Owe So Much To Desolation.

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

Write What You Want Bottomless From Bottom Of The Mind.

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.

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

It All Ends In Tears Anyway.

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

But I Remember Seeing A Mess Of Leaves Suddenly Go Skittering In The Wind And Into The Creek, Then Floating Rapidly Down The Creek Towards The Sea, Making Me Feel A Nameless Horror Even Then Of 'oh My God, We're All Being Swept Away To Sea No Matter What We Know Or Say Or Do

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.

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

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

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.

My Witness Is The Empty Sky.

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.'

-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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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?

Night Is Longer Than Day For Those Who Dream & Day Is Longer Than Night For Those Who Make Their Dreams Comes True.

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

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.

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

Absolutely No Way To Escape Enigmans.

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

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)

Don't Touch Me, I'm Full Of Snakes.

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

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?

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

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

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.

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.

Walking On Water Wasn't Built In A Day.

Walking On Water

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.

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.

And Silence Is The Golden Mountain

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

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?

Equally Empty, Equally To Be Loved, Equally A Coming Buddha

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

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 Tree Looks Like A Dog, Barking At Heaven.

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

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

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

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.

All Of Life Is A Foreign Country.

All He Needed Was A Wheel In His Hand And Four On The Road.

...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.

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

It’s A Sort Of Furtiveness … Like We Were A Generation Of Furtive. You Know, With An Inner Knowledge There’s No Use Flaunting On That Level, The Level Of The ‘public’, A Kind Of Beatness – I Mean, Being Right Down To It, To Ourselves, Because We All Really Know Where We Are – And A Weariness With All The Forms, All The Conventions Of The World … It’s Something Like That. So I Guess You Might Say We’re A Beat Generation.

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.

Somewhere Along The Line I Knew There'd Be Girls, Visions, Everything; Somewhere Along The Line The Pearl Would Be Handed To Me.

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.

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.

This Is The Story Of America. Everybody's Doing What They Think They're Supposed To Do.

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

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

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.

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.

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.

I Had Nothing To Offer Anybody Except My Own Confusion.

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