"Here's to the crazy ones, the misfits, the rebels, the troublemakers, the round pegs in the square holes... the ones who see things differently -- they're not fond of rules... You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them, but the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things... they push the human race forward, and while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius, because the ones who are crazy enough to think that they can change the world, are the ones who do."
— Jack Kerouac

"[...] 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 in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Awww!' What did they call such young people in Goethe's Germany?"
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion."
— Jack Kerouac

"One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple."
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

"My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them."
— Jack Kerouac

"The only truth is music"
— Jack Kerouac

"There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road: The Original Scroll)

"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."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road)

"I have lots of things to teach you now, in case we ever meet,
concerning the message that was transmitted to me under a pine tree
in North Carolina on a cold winter moonlit night. It said that
Nothing Ever Happened, so don't worry. It's all like a dream.
Everything is ecstasy, inside. We just don't know it because of our thinking-minds.
But in our true blissful essence of mind is known that everything is alright
forever and forever and forever. Close your eyes, let your hands
and nerve-ends drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence
inside the illusion of the world, and you will remember the lesson
you forgot, which was taught in immense milky way soft cloud innumerable worlds
long ago and not even at all. It is all one vast awakened thing. I call it the golden eternity.
It is perfect. 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. There's nothing to be afraid of and nothing to be glad about.
I know this from staring at mountains months on end. They never show any expression,
they are like empty space. Do you think the emptiness of space will ever crumble away?
Mountains will crumble, but the emptiness of space, which is the one universal essence
of mind, the vast awakenerhood, empty and awake, will never crumble away because
it was never born."
Selected Letters 1957-1969 and is a letter he wrote to his first wife, Edie in 1957."
— Jack Kerouac (The Portable Jack Kerouac)

"Something good will come of all things yet"
— Jack Kerouac

"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..."
— Jack Kerouac

"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."
— Jack Kerouac (Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings)

"Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry."
— Jack Kerouac

"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."
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

""As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind.""
— Jack Kerouac

"'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!'"
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

"he saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end."
— Jack Kerouac

"All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road."
— Jack Kerouac (On the Road: The Original Scroll)

"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."
— Jack Kerouac

"the road is life"
— Jack Kerouac

"Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself; I am large -- I contain multitudes."
— Walt Whitman

"This is what you shall do; Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body."
— Walt Whitman

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms."
— Henry David Thoreau (Walden: Or, Life in the Woods)

"Is it easier for a man to live his life again as a fish, than to accept the wonder of being human? So alone, so frightened, so wanting for what we are afraid to give tongue to."
— Richard Flanagan

"Writing is not lying, nor is it theft. It is a journey and search for transparency between one’s words and one’s soul.
"
— Richard Flanagan

"Those are my principles, and if you don't like them...well I have others."
— Groucho Marx

"What happens to people living in a society where everyone in power is lying, stealing, cheating and killing, and in our hearts we all know this, but the consequences of facing all these lies are so monstrous, we keep on hoping that maybe the corporate government administration and media are on the level with us this time.
Americans remind me of survivors of domestic abuse.
This is always the hope that this is the very, very, very last time one's ribs get re-broken again. "
— Inga Muscio (Cunt: A Declaration of Independence)

"From the backstabbing co-worker to the meddling sister-in-law, you are in charge of how you react to the people and events in your life. You can either give negativity power over your life or you can choose happiness instead. Take control and choose to focus on what is important in your life. Those who cannot live fully often become destroyers of life."
— Anaïs Nin

"I, while the gods laugh, the world's vortex am;
Maelstrom of passions in that hidden sea
Whose waves of all-time lap the coasts of me;
And in small compass the dark waters cram."
— Mervyn Peake

"It is my cape of good hope, and if it isn't I will probably bite your nose off"
— Mervyn Peake (Mr Pye)

""We are all imprisoned by the dictionary. We choose out of that vast, paper-walled prison our convicts, the little black printed words, when in truth we need fresh sounds to utter, new enfranchised noises which would produce a new effect.""
— Mervyn Peake (Titus Groan)

"A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving."
— Laozi

"Be content with what you have;
rejoice in the way things are.
When you realize there is nothing lacking,
the whole world belongs to you."
— Laozi

"Not seeking, not expecting, she is present, and can welcome all things."
— Laozi

"Silence is only frightening to people who are compulsively verbalizing."
— William S. Burroughs

"There is no intensity of love or feeling that does not involve the risk of crippling hurt. It is a duty to take this risk, to love and feel without defense or reserve. "
— William S. Burroughs

"I bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink..."
— William S. Burroughs

"As a young child I wanted to be a writer because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle."
— William S. Burroughs (The Adding Machine: Selected Essays)

"The face of evil is always the face of total need.
"
— William S. Burroughs

"If I should ever die, God forbid, let this be my epitaph:
THE ONLY PROOF HE NEEDED
FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
WAS MUSIC"
— Kurt Vonnegut

"I tell you, we are here on Earth to fart around, and don't let anybody tell you different."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"We have to continually be jumping off cliffs and developing our wings on the way down."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"I want to stand as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all the kinds of things you can't see from the center."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."
— Kurt Vonnegut (A Man Without a Country)

"Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt."
— Kurt Vonnegut (Slaughterhouse-Five)

"A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved."
— Kurt Vonnegut (The Sirens of Titan)

"Unusual travel suggestions are dancing lessons from God."
— Kurt Vonnegut

"Do you know what I am going to tell you, he said with his wry mouth, a pint of plain is your only man.

Notwithstanding this eulogy, I soon found that the mass of plain porter bears an unsatisfactory relation to its toxic content and I subsequently became addicted to brown stout in bottle, a drink which still remains the one that I prefer the most despite the painful and blinding fits of vomiting which a plurality of bottles has often induced in me."
— Flann O'Brien (Swim-Two-Birds)

"I saw that my witticism was unperceived and quietly replaced it in the treasury of my mind."
— Flann O'Brien (At Swim-Two-Birds)