"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)

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."
— Marcus Tullius Cicero

"Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results."
— Albert Einstein

"Don't walk behind me; I may not lead. Don't walk in front of me; I may not follow. Just walk beside me and be my friend."
— Albert Camus

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough"
— Mae West

"The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference."
— Elie Wiesel

"I am so clever that sometimes I don't understand a single word of what I am saying."
— Oscar Wilde

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover."
— Mark Twain

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."
— C.S. Lewis

"[...] 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)

"It has been said, 'time heals all wounds.' I do not agree. The wounds remain. In time, the mind, protecting its sanity, covers them with scar tissue and the pain lessens. But it is never gone."
— Rose Kennedy

"Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion."
— Jack Kerouac

"Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry."
— Jack Kerouac

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

"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

"Houses are full of things that gather dust"
— Jack Kerouac

"Life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away."
— Maya Angelou

"beautiful insane
in the rain"
— Jack Kerouac (The Subterraneans)

"They build their own Hells."
— 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)

"Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken."
— 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)

"It all ends in tears anyway."
— Jack Kerouac (The Dharma Bums)

"We are all brothers under the skin - and I, for one, would be willing to skin humanity to prove it."
— Ayn Rand