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

-Jack Kerouac

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The Air Was So

Jack Kerouac

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

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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.

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

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.

Desolation, Desolation, I Owe So Much To Desolation.

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.

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.

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

Ah, You Always Go For The Ones Who Don't Really Want You

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

Believe In The Holy Contour Of Life.

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

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 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.

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.

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

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

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

The Unspeakable Visions Of The Individual.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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!

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

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.

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 Think It's All Lovely Hallucination But I Love It Sorta.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Down In Denver, All I Did Was Die.

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

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.

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)

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!'

And The Stars Were Icicles Of Mockery

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

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

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

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 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?

For Life Is Holy And Every Moment Is Precious.

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

And Don't You Know That God Is Pooh Bear?

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?

Isn't It True That You Start Your Life A Sweet Child Believing In Everything Under Your Father's Roof? Then Comes The Day Of The Laodiceans, When You Know You Are Wretched And Miserable And Poor And Blind And Naked, And With The Visage Of A Gruesome Grieving Ghost You Go Shuddering Through Nightmare Life.

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'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

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.

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

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.

You Guys Are Going Somewhere Or Just Going?

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.

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.

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.

She Spoke Of Evenings In The Country Making Popcorn On The Porch. Once This Would Have Gladdened My Heart But Because Her Heart Was Not Glad When She Said It I Knew There Was Nothing In It But The Idea Of What One Should Do.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

Remove Literary, Grammatical And Syntactical Inhibition.

Burroughs Is The Greatest Satirical Writer Since Jonathan Swift.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

Stick At It Like A Benni Addict

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

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

My Witness Is The Empty Sky.

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.

Prison Is Where You Promise Yourself The Right To Live.

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)

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

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

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

A Sociable Smile Is Nothing But A Mouth Full Of Teeth.

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

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

I Like It Because Its Ugly

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

No Time For Poetry But Exactly What Is.

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.

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

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.'

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.

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

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

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

Beautiful Insane In The Rain

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)

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.

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

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.

All Of Life Is A Foreign Country.

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

The World You See Is Just A Movie In Your Mind. Rocks Dont See It. Bless And Sit Down. Forgive And Forget. Practice Kindness All Day To Everybody And You Will Realize You’re Already In Heaven Now. That’s The Story. That’s The Message. Nobody Understands It, Nobody Listens, They’re All Running Around Like Chickens With Heads Cut Off. I Will Try To Teach It But It Will Be In Vain, S’why I’ll End Up In A Shack Praying And Being Cool And Singing By My Woodstove Making Pancakes.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

Cliches Are Truisms And All Truisms Are True

There Are Worse Things Than Being Mad.

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.

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.

Go Moan For Man. It's The Pathos Of People That Gets Us Down, All The Lovers In This Dream.

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.

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.

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

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

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

"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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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?

It All Ends In Tears Anyway.

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.

The Taste Of Rain -- Why Kneel?

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Details Are The Life Of Prose.

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

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.

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

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."

Mankind Is Like Dogs, Not Gods - As Long As You Don't Get Mad They'll Bite You - But Stay Mad And You'll Never Be Bitten. Dogs Don't Respect Humility And Sorrow.

-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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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 Felt Free And Therefore I Was Free.

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

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-.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

...[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.

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

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

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

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

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."

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

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

It's Only Through Form That We Can Realize Emptiness

And Silence Is The Golden Mountain

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.

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

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

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

I Told Terry I Was Leaving. She Had Been Thinking About It All Night And Was Resigned To It. Emotionlessly She Kissed Me In The Vineyard And Walked Off Down The Row. We Turned At A Dozen Paces, For Love Is A Duel, And Looked At Each Other For The Last Time.

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.

We Fumed And Screamed In Our Mountain Nook, Mad Drunken Americans In The Mighty Land. We Were On The Roof Of America And All We Could Do Was Yell, I Guess - Across The Night.

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

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 { }

All Is Well, Practice Kindness, Heaven Is Nigh.

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

Are We Fallen Angels Who Didn't Want To Believe That Nothing Is Nothing And So Were Born To Lose Our Loved Ones And Dear Friends One By One And Finally Our Own Life, To See It Proved?

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.

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

Always Pull Back-and See How Silly We Must Look To God.

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.

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

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

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

Life Worth Living

We Tiptoed Around Each Other Like Heartbreaking New Friends.

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

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

Beat Generation

The Silence Was An Intense Roar.

Goddamn It, Feeling Is What I Like In Art, Not Craftiness And The Hiding Of Feelings.

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