Jack Kerouac

Notoriety and public confession in the literary form is a frazzler of the heart you were born with, believe me.

I don't really go out at all.

My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet.

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.

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

I didn't dictate sections of 'Visions of Cody.' I typed up a segment of taped conversation with Neal Cassady, or Cody, talking about his early adventures in L.A.

Symbolism is alright in 'fiction,' but I tell true life stories simply about what happened to people I knew.

I made myself famous by writing 'songs' and lyrics about the beauty of the things I did and ugliness, too.

I really hate to write.

The Catholic Church is a weird church. Much mysticism is sown broadspread from its ritual mysteries till it extends into the very lives of its constituents and parishoners.

I'm really Wallace Beery in 'The Champ.'

I know who the great poets are.

It's hard to write haiku. I write long, silly Indian poems.

As you get older, you get more... genealogical.

All my editors since Malcolm Cowley have had instructions to leave my prose exactly as I wrote it. In the days of Malcolm Cowley, with 'On the Road' and 'The Dharma Bums', I had no power to stand by my style for better or for worse.

Accept loss forever.

I didn't dictate sections of 'Visions of Cody'. I typed up a segment of taped conversation with Neal Cassady, or Cody, talking about his early adventures in L.A. It's four chapters.

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.

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

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.