Kerouac Quotes

“Galatea Dunkel was a tenacious loser.”

— Jack Kerouac

“What's Your Road, Man?”

— Jack Kerouac

“Fuck Kerouac; he would write his own story.”

— Linda Collison

“Everything from Colette to Kerouac.”

— Jacqueline Onassis

Jack Kerouac was cool because he had no idea he was.

— Dennis Miller

To be able to play Jack Kerouac or Sal Paradise, it's mad to me.

— Rupert Penry-Jones

“Paradise!' he screamed. 'The one and only indispensable Paradise.”

— Jack Kerouac

The cruellest thing you can do to Kerouac is reread him at thirty-eight.

— Hanif Kureishi

Kerouac was this kid who exemplified something happening.

— Howard Rheingold

I knew [Timothy] Leary, but barely knew, didn't really know Jan [Kerouac].

— William S. Burroughs

“Most road trips in China these days are still more John Steinbeck than Jack Kerouac,”

— Anonymous

“Around Jack (Kerouac) there circulated a palpable aura of fame and death.”

— Gary Snyder

“I realized Jack [Kerouac] was deeply committed to writing. Kesey was just as deeply committed to living and experiencing the lives of…

— Sterling Lord

Kerouac and I are not real at all. The only thing about a writer is that he has written, and not his…

— William S. Burroughs

My reasoning, if one can call it that, was inflamed by the scatter shot passions of youth and a literary diet overly…

— Jon Krakauer

Kerouac: You're ruining American poetry, O'Hara. O'Hara: That's more than you ever did for it, Kerouac

— Frank O'Hara

My golden dream was to move to New York and live in the Village and become that cool rebel beatnik Jack Kerouac.

— Kevin Kwan

I think it was when I ran into Kerouac and Burroughs - when I was 17 - that I realized I was…

— Allen Ginsberg

Kerouac opened a million coffee bars and sold a million pairs of Levis to both sexes. Woodstock rises from his pages.

— William S. Burroughs

Even Jack Kerouac, who famously said, "First thought, best thought," benefited from editing. His earliest works are the most edited, and they're…

— K. M. Soehnlein

I was always aware that Jack loved women not only for their bodies but for the stories that came into being as…

— Joyce Johnson

I was pretty partial to Kerouac and I also liked Flannery O'Connor and the Southern Gothic writing and local writers, like Jesse…

— Tyler Childers

If you tell certain people that you like Kerouac, they assume that's all you read, like you don't know anything else about…

— Ben Gibbard

When I grew up in the early '90s, the new World Wide Web felt like a gimmick, and I had no idea…

— Tony D'Souza

I was an absolute idiot, wearing polo-necks, reading Kerouac, watching Woody Allen movies, and jazz fitted right into all of that. My…

— Jamie Cullum

I think the idea of the lone tormented artist - which we can apply to others - I think that it needs…

— Anne Waldman

“It feels like I went right from pubescent to senior citizen. But what are you going to do? I'm lucky I caught…

— Jerry Stahl

Do you remember the church across the sands? You stood outside and planned to travel the lands, where the pilgrims go. So…

— Al Stewart

“For Kerouac, the embodiment of American Zen was Gary Snyder, the Pulitzer Prize-winning Buddhist poet and essayist, who he fictionalized as Japhy…

— Joel Dinerstein

“I read my copy of On the Road and dug the scenery whizzing past. On the Road is a semi-autobiographical novel about…

— Cory Doctorow

“I sit down and say, and I run all my friends and relatives and enemies one by one in this, without entertaining…

— Jack Kerouac

“We all grew up, those of us who took On the Road to heart. We came to cringe a little at our…

— Sarah Vowell

“Yet the voice could take fright . This Kathy Kerouac foresaw only too well when syllables suddenly started coming out of her…

— Nicole Brossard

“After 1957 On The Road sold a trillion levis and a million espresso coffee machines, and also sent countless kids on the…

— William S. Burroughs

If I'm still wistful about On the Road, I look on the rest of the Kerouac oeuvre--the poems, the poems!--in horror. Read…

— Sarah Vowell

“Kathy Kerouac knew the power of her voice. It was, she said, her 'golden thing,' an amulet protecting her against all disorders…

— Nicole Brossard

I was studying Tibetan Buddhism when I was quite young, again influenced by Kerouac.

— David Bowie

“Capote's rejoinder to Kerouac's assertion that he never needed to edit his work…"But, that's not writing . That's typing.”

— Truman Capote

“I just love crazy people like this,' Murphy said. 'Jack Kerouac people. Mad to live, mad to die, that kind of thing.”

— Jodi Lynn Anderson

Growing up in San Antonio, I was the dork at the Friday night football games with my head buried in a book…

— Amy Chozick