It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse.

Ezra Pound (American, 1885–1972)

I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth.
William Faulkner

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

Accept loss forever.
Jack Kerouac

All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.
Jack Kerouac

All of life is a foreign country.
Jack Kerouac

All our best men are laughed at in this nightmare land.
Jack Kerouac

Avoid the world, it's just a lot of dust and drag and means nothing in the end.
Jack Kerouac

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

I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.
Jack Kerouac

I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life, but that great consciousness of life.
Jack Kerouac

If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.
Jack Kerouac

It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.
Jack Kerouac

Mankind is like dogs, not gods - as long as you don't get mad they'll bite you - but stay mad and you'll never be bitten. Dogs don't respect humility and sorrow.
Jack Kerouac

Maybe that's what life is... a wink of the eye and winking stars.
Jack Kerouac

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

My witness is the empty sky.
Jack Kerouac

Offer them what they secretly want and they of course immediately become panic-stricken.
Jack Kerouac

Our battered suitcases were piled on the sidewalk again; we had longer ways to go. But no matter, the road is life.
Jack Kerouac

Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?
Jack Kerouac

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.
Jack Kerouac

You can't teach the old maestro a new tune.
Jack Kerouac

‘Genius is the recovery of childhood at will.’ –Arthur Rimbaud