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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.
-Jack Kerouac
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The Sun Goes Down

Jack Kerouac
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.
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Beautiful
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More From Jack Kerouac
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.
Expression
Worry
Soul
In Our True Blissful Essence Of Mind Is Known That Everything Is Alright Forever And Forever And Forever...listen To The Silence Inside The Illusion Of The World, And You Will Remember The Lesson You Forgot, It Is All One Vast Awakened Thing. We Were Never Really Born, We Will Never Really Die. It Has Nothing To Do With The Imaginary Idea Of A Personal Self, Other Selves, Many Selves Everywhere: Self Is Only An Idea, A Mortal Idea. That Which Passes Into Everything Is One Thing. It's A Dream Already Ended.
Dream
Essence
Ideas
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.
Dream
Wisdom
Morning
As I Grew Older I Became A Drunk. Why? Because I Like Ecstasy Of The Mind.
Drunk
Mind
Grew
Ah, You Always Go For The Ones Who Don't Really Want You
Want
We Were All Delighted, We All Realized We Were Leaving Confusion And Nonsense Behind And Performing Our One And Noble Function Of The Time, Move.
Moving
Confusion
Leaving
Houses Are Full Of Things That Gather Dust
Wisdom
Dust
House
I'm Stuck Struggling In The Cold Water, And All I Can Do Is Grieve, Grieve, In The Hoar Necessitous Horror Of The Morning, Bitterly I Hate Myself, Bitterly It's Too Late Yet While I Feel Better I Still Feel Ephemeral And Unreal And Unable To Straighten My Thoughts Or Even Really Grieve, In Fact I Feel Too Stupid To Be Really Bitter, In Short I Don't Know What I'm Doing And I'm Being Told What To Do.
Morning
Hate
Stupid
The 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.
Stress
Blood
Silence
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.
Mother
Italian
Years
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?
Wisdom
Sweet
Hate
I Looked Up At The Dark Sky And Prayed To God For A Better Break In Life And A Better Chance To Do Something For The Little People I Loved.
Dark
Sky
People
My Eyes Were Glued On Life And They Were Full Of Tears.
Wisdom
Eye
Tears
You Can't Live In This World But There's Nowhere Else To Go.
World
This World
Don't Drink To Get Drunk. Drink To Enjoy Life.
Drinking
Drunk
Enjoy Life
I Wasn't Scared; I Was Just Somebody Else, Some Stranger, And My Whole Life Was A Haunted Life, The Life Of A Ghost.
Scared
Ghost
Stranger
So Therefore I Dedicate Myself, To My Art, My Sleep, My Dreams, My Labors, My Suffrances, My Loneliness, My Unique Madness, My Endless Absorption And Hunger Because I Cannot Dedicate Myself To Any Fellow Being.
Dream
Wisdom
Art
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
Lonely
Wine
Sleep
I'd Also Gone Through An Entire Year Of Celibacy Based On My Feeling That Lust Was The Direct Cause Of Birth Which Was The Direct Cause Of Suffering And Death.
Years
Suffering And Death
Feelings
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-.
Book
Years
Play
Something That You Feel Will Find Its Own Form.
Writing
Form
Feels
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.
Girl
Dirty
Hair
What's In Store For Me In The Direction I Don't Take?
Wisdom
Stores
The Silence Was An Intense Roar.
Silence
Intense
The Golden Eternity Is { }
Golden
Eternity
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.
Wisdom
Leaving
World
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.
Thinking
Orange
Touching
...and Performing Our One And Noble Function Of The Time, Move.
Moving
Noble
Function
If You Own A Rug You Own Too Much.
Wisdom
Too Much
Ifs
Bee, Why Are You Staring At Me? I Am Not A Flower??
Flower
Bees
Staring
...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.
Eye
Soul
Lovely
It Was The Work Of The Quiet Mountains, This Torrent Of Purity At My Feet.
Feet
Mountain
Quiet
Pretty Girls Make Graves
Girl
Pretty Girl
Graves
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
Mother
Dream
Sweet
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.
Art
Writing
Joy
No Time For Poetry But Exactly What Is.
Poetry
Crafts
La Is The Loneliest And Most Brutal Of American Cities; Ny Gets God-awful Cold In The Winter But There's A Feeling Of Wacky Comradeship Somewhere In Some Streets. La Is A Jungle.
Winter
Cities
Feelings
There Is Universal Substance Which Is Divine Substance Because Where Else Can It Be?
Substance
Divine
Universal
After All, A Homeless Man Has Reason To Cry, Everything In The World Is Pointed Against Him.
Men
World
Cry
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.
Mean
People
Childhood
February Dawn -- Frost On The Path Where I Paced All Winter.
Winter
Dawn
Frost
Marylou Was Watching Dean As She Had Watched Him Clear Across The Country And Back, Out Of The Corner Of Her Eye--with A Sullen, Sad Air, As Though She Wanted To Cut Off His Head And Hide It In Her Closet, An Envious And Rueful Love Of Him So Amazingly Himself, All Raging And Sniffy And Crazy-wayed, A Smile Of Tender Dotage But Also Sinister Envy That Frightened Me About Her, A Love She Knew Would Never Bear Fruit Because When She Looked At His Hangjawed Bony Face With Its Male Self-containment And Absentmindedness She Knew He Was Too Mad.
Country
Crazy
Eye
Nothing Ever Happened - Not Even This
Happened
I Ate Apple Pie And Ice Cream—it Was Getting Better As I Got Deeper Into Iowa, The Pie Bigger, The Ice Cream Richer. There Were The Most Beautiful Bevies Of Girls Everywhere I Looked In Des Moines That Afternoon—they Were Coming Home From High School—but I Had No Time For Thoughts Like That…so I Rushed Past The Pretty Girls, And The Prettiest Girls In The World Live In Des Moines.
Beautiful
Girl
Home
Life Was Dense, Dark, Ancient. They Watched Dean, Serious And Insane At His Raving Wheel, With Eyes Of Hawks. All Had Their Hands Outstretched. They Had Come Down From The Back Mountains And Higher Places To Hold Forth Their Hands For Something They Thought Civilization Could Offer, And They Never Dreamed The Sadness And The Poor Broken Delusion Of It.
Sadness
Eye
Dark
So Long And Take It Easy, Because If You Start Taking Things Seriously, It Is The End Of You.
Long
Easy
Ends
And I Will Die, And You Will Die, And We All Will Die, And Even The Stars Will Fade Out One After Another In Time.
Stars
Fades
Dies
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.
Winter
Men
Action
Cats Yawn Because They Realize That There's Nothing To Do.
Cat
Realizing
And When The Fog's Over And The Stars And The Moon Come Out At Night It'll Be A Beautiful Sight.
Beautiful
Stars
Moon
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.
Dream
Book
Writing
We Lay On Our Backs Looking At The Ceiling And Wondering What God Had Wrought When He Made Life So Sad And Disinclined.
Ceilings
Wonder
Made
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.
Wisdom
Men
Giving
The Fact Was I Had The Vision... I Think Everyone Has... What We Lack Is The Method.
Thinking
Vision
Facts
The Yard Was Full Of Tomato Plants About To Ripen, And Mint, Mint, Everything Smelling Of Mint, And One Fine Old Tree That I Loved To Sit Under On Those Cool Perfect Starry California October Nights Unmatched Anywhere In The World.
Night
California
Perfect
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)
Epic
Artist
Mad
Put Down The Pen Someone Else Gave You. No One Ever Drafted A Life Worth Living On Borrowed Ink.
Ink
Life Worth Living
Living On
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.
Mean
Thinking
Blow
Maybe That's What Life Is... A Wink Of The Eye And Winking Stars.
Life
Stars
Eye
Is Virgin You Trying To Fathom Me
Trying
Fathom
Virgins
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.
Country
Journey
Thinking
And The Hippos Were Boiled In Their Tanks!
Tanks
Beat Generation
Hippo
Then It's Goodbye, Sangsara For Me Besides, Girls Aren't As Good As They Look And Samadhi Is Better Than You Think When It Starts In Hitting Your Head In With Buzz Of Glittergold Heaven's Angels, Wailing, Saying We've Been Waiting For You Since Morning, Jack Why Were You So Long Dallying In The Sooty Room? This Transcendental Brilliance Is The Better Part (of Nothingness I Sing) Okay. Quit. Mad. Stop.
Girl
Goodbye
Morning
-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.
Girl
Dream
Spiritual
We Wandered In A Frenzy And A Dream (301).
Dream
Frenzy
Mind Is The Maker, For No Reason At All, For All This Creation, Created To Fall.
Fall
Mind
Creation
I'm Catholic And I Can't Commit Suicide, But I Plan To Drink Myself To Death.
Suicide
Drinking
Beer
If Critics Say Your Work Stinks It's Because They Want It To Stink And They Can Make It Stink By Scaring You Into Conformity With Their Comfortable Little Standards. Standards So Low That They Can No Longer Be Considered "dangerous" But Set In Place In Their Compartmental Understandings.
Wisdom
Art
Powerful
Some Of My Most Neurotically Fierce Bitterness Is The Result Of Realizing How Untrue People Have Become.
People
Bitterness
Fierce
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.
Writing
Dark
Simple
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?
Life And Love
Father
Hands
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.
Night
Love Is
Thinking
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.
Wish
Matter
Better To Sleep In An Uncomfortable Bed Free, Than Sleep In A Comfortable Bed Unfree.
Wisdom
Sleep
Bed
I Didn't Know What To Say. I Felt Like Crying, Goddammit Everybody In The World Wants An Explanation For Your Acts And For Your Very Being.
Life
World
Want
There Is A Blessedness Surely To Be Believed, And That Is That Everything Abides In Eternal Ecstasy, Now And Forever.
Forever
Ecstasy
Blessedness
...the Tale That's Told For No Other Reason But Companionship, Which Is Another (and My Favorite) Definition Of Literature, The Tale That's Told For Companionship And To Teach Something Religious, Of Religious Reverence, About Real Life, In This Real World Which Literature Should (and Here Does) Reflect.
Religious
Real
Doe
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.
Girl
Sex
Real
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.
Men
Blow
Years
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.
Ignorance
Joy
Sorrow
They Build Their Own Hells.
Hell
At Lilac Evening I Walked With Every Muscle Aching Among The Lights Of 27th And Welton In The Denver Colored Section, Wishing I Were A Negro, Feeling That The Best The White World Had Offered Was Not Enough Ecstasy For Me, Not Enough Life, Joy, Kicks, Darkness, Music, Not Enough Night.
Night
Light
White
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?
Thinking
Land
Waiting
Ah Japhy You Taught Me The Final Lesson Of Them All, You Can't Fall Off A Mountain.
Fall
Mountain
Finals
...[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.
Eye
Age
Hammers
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
Origin Of Life
Years
Jail
My Karma Was To Be Born In America Where Nobody Has Any Fun Or Believes In Anything, Especially Freedom.
Karma
Fun
Believe
It Was All Completely Serious, All Completely Hallucinated, All Completely Happy.
Serious
I Wished I Could Explain It To Those I Loved, My Mother, To Japhy, But There Just Weren't Any Words To Describe The Nothingness And Purity Of It. "is There A Certain And Definite Teaching To Be Given To All Living Creatures?" Was The Question Probably Asked To Beetle Browed Snowy Dipankara, And His Answer Was The Roaring Silence Of The Diamond.
Mother
Teaching
Silence
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.
Fun
Silly
Thinking
Genius Gives Birth, Talent Delivers. What Rembrandt Or Van Gogh Saw In The Night Can Never Be Seen Again.
Night
Giving
Design
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?
Childhood
Different
Would Be
The Whole Mad Swirl Of Everything That Was To Come Began Then.
Mad
Literature
Swirls
I Think It's All Lovely Hallucination But I Love It Sorta.
Thinking
Lovely
Hallucinations
When You Start Separating People From Their Rivers, What Have You Got? Bureaucracy!
Rivers
People
Bureaucracy
Let The Mind Beware, That Though The Flesh Be Bugged, The Circumstances Of Existence Are Pretty Glorious.
Wisdom
Mind
Gorges
...but I Preferred Reading The American Landscape As We Went Along. Every Bump, Rise, And Stretch In It Mystified My Longing.
Reading
Bumps
Landscape
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.
Hangover
Heart
Sleep
You Seek Identity In The Midst Of Indistinguishab Le Chaos, In Sprawling Nameless Reality.
Reality
Identity
Chaos
Offer Them What They Secretly Want And They Of Course Immediately Become Panic-stricken.
Wisdom
Want
Panic
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.
Lonely
Stars
Home
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.
Soul
Firsts
Lips
Who Knows, My God, But That The Universe Is Not One Vast Sea Of Compassion Actually, The Veritable Holy Honey, Beneath All This Show Of Personality And Cruelty?
Compassion
Sea
Personality
Cliches Are Truisms And All Truisms Are True
Cliche
Truism
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.
Baby
Sadness
Cowboy
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.
Wisdom
Travel
Stars
This Is The Story Of America. Everybody's Doing What They Think They're Supposed To Do.
4th Of July
Thinking
America
Paris Is A Woman But London Is An Independent Man Puffing His Pipe In A Pub.
Independent
Men
Paris
Don't Touch Me, I'm Full Of Snakes.
Snakes
Touch Me
Everything I Wrote Was True Because I Believed What I Saw.
Truth
Saws
Colleges Being Nothing But Grooming Schools For The Middle-class Non-identity Which Usually Finds Its Perfect Expression On The Outskirts Of The Campus In Rows Of Well-to-do Houses With Lawns And Television Sets In Each Living Room With Everybody Looking At The Same Thing And Thinking The Same Thing At The Same Time While The Japhies Of The World Go Prowling In The Wilderness To Hear The Voice Crying In The Wilderness, To Find The Ecstacy Of The Stars, To Find The Dark Mysterious Secret Of The Origin Of Faceless Wonderless Crapulous Civilization.
Stars
School
Dark
Believe In The Holy Contour Of Life.
Believe
Relaxation
Holy
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 -
Spiritual
Moving
Book
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.
Writing
Thinking
Sorrow
Don't Think Of Words When You Stop But To See Picture Better.
Inspirational
Thinking
Vision
All Of Life Is A Foreign Country.
Life
Country
Travel
But That's Alright Because Now Everything'll Be Alright & We'll Soothe The Forever Boys & Girls & Before We're Thru We'll Find A Name For This Goddam Golden Eternity & Tell A Story Too
Girl
Boys
Names
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.
Sweet
Children
Father
And As Far As I Can See The World Is Too Old For Us To Talk About It With Our New Words.
World
New Words
I Can
I'd Better Be A Poet Or Lay Down Dead.
Poet
Lays
Bein Crazy Is The Least Of My Worries.
Crazy
Worry
A Scene Should Be Selected By The Writer For Haunted-ness-of-mind Interest. If You're Not Haunted By Something, As By A Dream, A Vision, Or A Memory, Which Are Involuntary, You're Not Interested Or Even Involved.
Dream
Memories
Mind
Go Moan For Man. It's The Pathos Of People That Gets Us Down, All The Lovers In This Dream.
Dream
Men
People
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.
Thinking
Mind
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.
Sunset
Color
Purple
I Had Nothing To Offer Anybody Except My Own Confusion.
Thinking
Confusion
Confusing
You Can't Fight City Hall. It Keeps Changing Its Name.
Fighting
Cities
Names
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?
Light
Flames
Forever
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.
Wisdom
Mind
Details
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.
Real
Talking
Intellectual
It Was My Dream That Screwed Up, The Stupid Hearthside Idea That It Would Be Wonderful To Follow One Great Red Line Across America Instead Of Trying Various Roads And Routes.
Dream
Stupid
Ideas
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.
Dream
Perfect
Rose
Ah, Life Is A Gate, A Way, A Path To Paradise Anyway, Why Not Live For Fun And Joy And Love Or Some Sort Of Girl By A Fireside, Why Not Go To Your Desire And Laugh.
Love
Life
Girl
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.
Air
Blue
Mountain
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.
Thinking
Sneak In
World
I'd Rather Be Thin Than Famous But I'm Fat Paste That In Your Broadway Show
Broadway
Fats
Shows
...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.
Wisdom
Mean
Worry
If You Tell A True Story, You Can't Be Wrong.
Inspirational
Stories
True Story
I Want To Work In Revelations, Not Just Spin Silly Tales For Money. I Want To Fish As Deep Down As Possible Into My Own Subconscious In The Belief That Once That Far Down, Everyone Will Understand Because They Are The Same That Far Down.
Silly
Want
Belief
Life Is Life, And Kind Is Kind
Kind
Life Is
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.
Girl
Forever
Vision
The Only Truth Is Music.
Music
Wisdom
Inspirational Music
It Ain't Whatcha Write, It's The Way Atcha Write It.
Writing
Way
Inspiration To Write
Walking On Water Wasn't Built In A Day.
Water
Walking On Water
Walking
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.
Writing
Men
Energy
..and That Was The One Distinct Time In My Life, The Strangest Moment Of All, When I Didnt Know Who I Was
Moments
Road Life
Knows
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.
God
Faith
Children
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.
Writing
Reflection
Hands
It's Good-bye. But We Lean Forward To The Next Crazy Venture Beneath The Skies
Goodbye
Travel
Crazy
No Fear Or Shame In The Dignity Of Yr Experience, Language & Knowledge
Writing
Dignity
Language
And Then We’ll All Go Off To Sweet Life, ‘cause Now Is The Time And We All Know Time!
Sweet
Causes
Sweet Life
Our Battered Suitcases Were Piled On The Sidewalk Again; We Had Longer Ways To Go. But No Matter, The Road Is Life.
Inspirational
Inspiring
Travel
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.
Done
Golden
Way
And The Stars Were Icicles Of Mockery
Stars
Icicles
Mockery
We Agreed To Love Each Other Madly.
Love Each Other
Because In The End, You Won't Remember The Time You Spent Working In The Office Or Mowing Your Lawn. Climb That Goddamn Mountain
Motivational
Wisdom
Travel
It's Okay, Girl, We'll Make It Till The Sun Goes Down Forever. And Until Then What You Got To Lose But The Losing? We're Fallen Angels Who Didn't Believe That Nothing Means Nothing.
Girl
Believe
Mean
Holy Flowers Floating In The Air, Were All These Tired Faces In The Dawn Of Jazz America.
Flower
Tired
Air
I Don't Know, I Don't Care, And It Doesn't Make Any Difference.
Wisdom
Caring
Differences
You Don't Know What To Say To Me Because The Kingdom Is Within...flesh And Blood's Dream...so You Fly Now, Pay Later, All Of Us...i Mean Actually It's Pay Now, Fly Later
Dream
Mean
Blood
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.
Beautiful
Air
Color
I Clearly Saw The Skeleton Underneath All This Show Of Personality What Is Left Of A Man And All His Pride But Bones?
Pride
Men
Skeletons
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
Being Alone
Men
Boredom
I Just Won't Sleep," I Decided. There Were So Many Other Interesting Things To Do.
Wisdom
Sleep
Interesting
In My Medicine Cabinet, The Winter Fly Has Died Of Old Age.
Winter
Medicine
Age
This Was Really The Way My Whole Road Experience Began, And The Things That Were To Come Are Too Fantastic Not To Tell.
Way
Fantastic
Whole
...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.
Soul
Mixing
Would Be
I Suddenly Discovered The Delight Of Rebellion.
Delight
Rebellion
The Air Was Soft, The Stars So Fine, The Promise Of Every Cobbled Alley So Great, That I Thought I Was In A Dream.
Dream
Stars
Air
It Always Makes Me Proud To Love The World Somehow- Hate's So Easy Compared.
Wisdom
Hate
World
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.
Life
Lying
Thinking
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.
Night
Squares
Lasts
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.
Wisdom
Home
Tired
Let Nature Do The Freezing And Frightening And Isolating In This World. Let Men Work And Love And Fight It Off.
Wisdom
Fighting
Men
What A Horror It Would Have Been If The World Was Real, Because If The World Was Real, It Would Be Immortal.
Real
Would Be
World
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.
Wisdom
Sleep
Thinking
At Night I Closed My Eyes And Saw My Bones Threading The Mud Of My Grave.
Eye
Night
Mud
That's The Story Of My Life Rich Or Poor And Mostly Poor And Truly Poor.
Rich Or Poor
Stories
Story Of My Life
Keep It Kickwriting At All Costs Too, That Is, Write Only What Kicks You And Keeps You Overtime Awake From Sheer Mad Joy.
Writing
Mad
Joy
It Was A Rainy Night. It Was The Myth Of The Rainy Night.
Night
Rainy
Myth
Sweet Life Continues In The Breeze, In The Golden Fields.
Sweet
Golden
Fields
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.
Wall
Fog
Blue
All I Wanted To Do Was Sneak Out Into The Night And Disappear Somewhere, And Go And Find Out What Everybody Was Doing All Over The Country.
Country
Night
Disappear
Your Buddhism Has Made You Mean Ray And Makes You Even Afraid To Take Your Clothes Off For A Simple Healthy Orgy
Mean
Buddhism
Simple
The Only People For Me Are The Mad Ones, The Ones Who Are Mad To Live, Mad To Talk, Mad To Be Saved.
Hippie
Yawning
People
When You've Understood This Scripture, Throw It Away. If You Can't Understand This Scripture, Throw It Away. I Insist On Your Freedom.
Wisdom
Positivity
Scripture
Who Can Leap The World's Ties And Sit With Me Among White Clouds?
Clouds
White
Ties
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.
Wisdom
Long
Pages
We Should Be Wondering Tonight, "is There A World?" But I Could Go And Talk On 5, 10, 20 Minutes About Is There A World, Because There Is Really No World, Cause Sometimes I'm Walkin' On The Ground And I See Right Through The Ground. And There Is No World. And You'll Find Out.
Tonight
World
Causes
It's Only Through Form That We Can Realize Emptiness
Emptiness
Realizing
Form
I See As Much As Doors'll Allow, Open Or Shut.
Doors
One Man Practicing Kindness In The Wilderness Is Worth All The Temples This World Pulls.
Wisdom
Peace
Kindness
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.
Wisdom
Giving Up
Yelling
Rocks Are Space, And Space Is Illusion.
Rocks
Space
Illusion
I Was A Man Of The Earth, Precisely As I Had Dreamed I Would Be.
Men
Would Be
Earth
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.
Wisdom
Weather
Firsts
I Nudged Myself Closer To The Ledge And Closed My Eyes And Thought 'oh What A Life This Is, Why Do We Have To Be Born In The First Place, And Only So We Can Have Our Poor Gentle Flesh Laid Out To Such Impossible Horrors As Huge Mountains And Rock And Empty Space,' And With Horror I Remembered The Famous Zen Saying, 'when You Get To The Top Of A Mountain, Keep Climbing.' The Saying Made My Hair Stand On End; It Had Been Such Cute Poetry Sitting On Alvah's Straw Mats.
Cute
Eye
Hair
I Promise I Shall Never Give Up, And That I'll Die Yelling & Laughing.
Life
Giving Up
Yelling
There Are Worse Things Than Being Mad.
Wisdom
Mad
Being Mad
The Unspeakable Visions Of The Individual.
Vision
Individual
Unspeakable
Understanding Quotes: Their Essence and Application

Quotes, or quotations, are powerful tools in communication, encapsulating ideas, emotions, and wisdom in concise expressions. They serve various purposes across different contexts, from academic writing to everyday conversation.

1. Defining Quotes

A quote is a repetition of someone else's statement or thoughts. It can be a direct replication of words spoken or written by another individual, often used to support arguments, provide evidence, or convey profound insights.


2. The Importance of Quotes

2.1. Enhancing Credibility

Incorporating quotes from authoritative sources can bolster the credibility of your work. By referencing experts or primary sources, you demonstrate thorough research and a solid foundation for your arguments.


2.2. Providing Evidence

Quotes serve as concrete evidence to support claims. In academic and professional writing, they validate points made, offering readers a basis to trust the information presented.


2.3. Conveying Emotions and Perspectives

Quotes can encapsulate emotions and perspectives succinctly. They allow writers to express complex feelings or viewpoints through the words of others, often more eloquently than paraphrasing.


3. Types of Quotes

3.1. Direct Quotes

Direct quotes involve copying the exact words from a source, enclosed in quotation marks. They are used when the original wording is significant or particularly well-expressed.


3.2. Indirect Quotes (Paraphrasing)

Indirect quotes restate the original message in your own words. While not enclosed in quotation marks, they still require proper attribution to the original source.


3.3. Block Quotes

Block quotes are lengthy direct quotations, formatted as a separate block of text. They are typically used for quotes exceeding a certain length, varying by citation style. For instance, in APA style, quotes longer than 40 words are formatted as block quotes.



4. Proper Usage of Quotes


4.1. Contextual Relevance

Ensure that the quote you choose is relevant to the topic and adds value to your content. Avoid inserting quotes solely for decorative purposes.


4.2. Integration into Your Writing

Seamlessly integrate quotes into your writing. Introduce them appropriately and follow up with analysis or commentary to connect them to your main points.


4.3. Attribution and Citation

Always attribute quotes to their original authors and provide proper citations according to the required style guide (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.).


5. Common Mistakes to Avoid


5.1. Overusing Quotes

Relying too heavily on quotes can overshadow your voice. Use them sparingly to support your arguments, not replace them.


5.2. Lack of Analysis

Presenting a quote without analysis or explanation can leave readers questioning its relevance. Always follow up with your interpretation or discussion.


5.3. Misquoting or Taking Out of Context

Ensure that quotes are accurate and not taken out of context, as this can mislead readers and undermine your credibility.



6. Quotes in Different Contexts


6.1. Academic Writing

In academic writing, quotes are used to support arguments, provide evidence, and engage with existing literature. Proper citation is crucial to avoid plagiarism.


6.2. Journalism

Journalists use quotes to provide firsthand accounts, add authenticity, and present multiple perspectives within a story.


6.3. Literature and Creative Writing

In literature, quotes can be used to convey character voices, themes, and stylistic elements. They enrich narratives and provide depth to storytelling.



7. Punctuation and Formatting


Understanding the correct punctuation and formatting of quotes is essential:


Quotation Marks: Always enclose direct quotes within quotation marks.


Punctuation Placement: In American English, periods and commas are placed inside quotation marks, while colons and semicolons are placed outside.


Block Quotes: For longer quotes, format them as block quotes without quotation marks, and indent the entire block.



8. Ethical Considerations


Ethical use of quotes involves accurate representation, proper attribution, and respect for intellectual property. Misuse can lead to plagiarism, which carries serious academic and professional consequences.

9. Tools for Managing Quotes


Utilize tools like citation generators and plagiarism checkers to manage quotes effectively. These tools help ensure proper formatting and originality in your writing.



Conclusion


Quotes are invaluable in enriching content, providing evidence, and conveying complex ideas succinctly. When used appropriately, they enhance the quality and credibility of your writing. Always ensure relevance, proper integration, and ethical usage to maximize their impact.


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