Angela Birt > Angela's Quotes

“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream”
― 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 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.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“My witness is the empty sky.”
― Jack Kerouac

“I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“What's in store for me in the direction I don't take?”
― Jack Kerouac

“Don't touch me, I'm full of snakes.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“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

“I don't know, I don't care, and it doesn't make any difference.”
― Jack Kerouac

“All he needed was a wheel in his hand and four on the road.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road: The Original Scroll

“Jack Kerouac was cool because he had no idea he was.”
― Dennis Miller

“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.”
― Jack Kerouac

“Sal, we gotta go and never stop going 'till we get there.'
'Where we going, man?'
'I don't know but we gotta go.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“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.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“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”
― Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

“Rocks are space, and space is illusion.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“Nothing ever happened - Not even this ”
― Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

“You'd be surprised how little I knew even up to yesterday”
― Jack Kerouac

“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. ”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“One man practicing kindness in the wilderness is worth all the temples this world pulls.”
― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

“If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.”
― Dorothy Parker

“What fresh hell is this?”
― Dorothy Parker, The Portable Dorothy Parker

“Résumé
Razors pain you,
Rivers are damp,
Acids stain you,
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful,
Nooses give,
Gas smells awful.
You might as well live.”
― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

“By the time you swear you're his,
Shivering and sighing.
And he vows his passion is,
Infinite, undying.
Lady make note of this --
One of you is lying.”
― Dorothy Parker

“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”
― Dorothy Parker

“If I didn't care for fun and such,
I'd probably amount to much.
But I shall stay the way I am,
Because I do not give a damn.”
― Dorothy Parker, Enough Rope

“They sicken of the calm who know the storm.”
― Dorothy Parker, Sunset Gun: Poems

“Now I know the things I know, and I do the things I do; and if you do not like me so, to hell, my love, with you!”
― Dorothy Parker