Door Wide Open Quotes

“I became intent on saving him through showing him that he was loved.”
― Joyce Johnson, Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958

“I was always aware that Jack loved women not only for their bodies but for the stories that came into being as they interacted with him--they were part of his "road," the infinite range of experience that always had to remain open to fuel his work.”
― Joyce Johnson, Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958

“Be as kind to yourself as you are to your cats—and I want you to know you made me awfully happy last weekend and I wish I could make you awfully happy, or that something could.”
― Jack Kerouac, Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters 1957-1958

“By universal prayer I simply mean, when I step out of the house and look up at those cloudy worlds of stars, it becomes awfully easy to feel compassion that this dream can be so sad & mistaken, you know what I mean... mere thought is a prayer.”
― Joyce Johnson, Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958

“But with you - I felt as though nothing could touch me, and if anything happened, the Hell with it. You don't know what narrow lives girls have, how few real adventures there are for them; misadventures, yes, like abortions and little men following them in subways, but seldom anything like seeing ships at night. So that's why we've all taken off like this, and that's also part of why I love you.”
― Joyce Johnson, Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958

“You are both a believer and a seeker, and to me it is the ability to seek or believe that is important, not what is sought or believed in.”
― Joyce Johnson, Door Wide Open: A Beat Love Affair in Letters, 1957-1958