Haley > Haley's Quotes

“I have failed at many things, but I have never been afraid.”
― Nadine Gordimer

“[...]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!”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“My father might not have held my hand or expressed his love openly, but he taught Callie and me that we had inherent values, that we were fully formed human beings without a boy by our side.”
― Amy Engel, The Book of Ivy

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

“It is easy to love people in memory; the hard thing is to love them when they are there in front of you.”
― John Updike, My Father's Tears and Other Stories

“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

“If you have the guts to be yourself, other people'll pay your price.”
― John Updike, Rabbit, Run

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

“What art offers is space – a certain breathing room for the spirit.”
― John Updike

“What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“We are fated to love one another; we hardly exist outside our love, we are just animals without it, with a birth and a death and constant fear between. Our love has lifted us up, out of the dreadfulness of merely living.”
― John Updike, Brazil

“A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“Happiness consists in realizing it is all a great strange dream”
― Jack Kerouac

“Looking foolish does the spirit good. The need not to look foolish is one of youth's many burdens; as we get older we are exempted from more and more.”
― John Updike

“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”
― Jack Kerouac

“I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“If neurotic is wanting two mutually exclusive things at one and the same time, then I'm neurotic as hell. I'll be flying back and forth between one mutually exclusive thing and another for the rest of my days.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“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.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my eyes and all is born again.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“There is nothing like puking with somebody to make you into old friends.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar

“Don't use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry.”
― Jack Kerouac

“I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“I will never be an old man. To me old age is always 15 years older than I am.”
― Francis Bacon

“Do you hate people?”

“I don't hate them...I just feel better when they're not around.”
― Charles Bukowski, Barfly

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

“Some people never go crazy. What truly horrible lives they must lead.”
― Charles Bukowski

“what matters most is how well you walk through the fire”
― Charles Bukowski

“Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.”
― Francis Bacon