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Read This If You're Feeling Stuck: 22 Jack Kerouac Quotes To Spur You Towards Adventure

There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.
Katie Mather
October 31, 2016
“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
Tagged: Mad, live, Life, burn, Experience
“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: travel, Explore
“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me, as is ever so on the road.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: travel, Explore, road, Ahead, Future
“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
Tagged: travel, Explore, road, Goodbyes, forward
“The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: travel, Explore, promises, Dreams
“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
Tagged: Love, Unrequited Love, Girls, Pain
“The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view.”
— Jack Kerouac, via Wikiquote
Tagged: Experience, Learning, Teach
“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
Tagged: Goodbyes, possibilities, Future
“I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at someday with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-ordered lives and got up in the morning to walk proudly on the sidewalks of life, never dreaming the raggedy madness and riot of our actual lives, our actual night, the hell of it, the senseless emptiness.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: Madness, Wonder, Life, Dreaming, Emptiness
“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
Tagged: Wonder, Life, lost, haunting
“My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: Life, Madness, Time
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Tagged: Words, Simple
“It all ends in tears anyway.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Tagged: Tears, End, Endings
“Down on the lake rosy reflections of celestial vapor appeared, and I said, 'God, I love you' and looked to the sky and really meant it. 'I have fallen in love with you, God. Take care of us all, one way or the other.' To the children and the innocent it's all the same.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Tagged: God, Nature, Love
“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
Tagged: Feeling, Memories, Familiartiy
“Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running—that's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, with the Ma-Wink fallopian virgin warm stars reflecting on the outer channel fluid belly waters. And if your cans are redhot and you can't hold them in your hands, just use good old railroad gloves, that's all.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Tagged: Happiness, Simplicity, Alone, Free, Feeling, Life
“Finding Nirvana is like locating silence.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Tagged: Simplicity, Silence, Nirvana
“I tried to tell her how excited I was about life and the things we could do together; saying that, and planning to leave Denver in two days. She turned away wearily. We lay on our backs, looking at the ceiling and wondering what God had wrought when He made life so sad.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: Life, Wonder, God, Sad
“We agreed to love each other madly.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: Love, Madness
“'I just won't sleep,' I decided. There were so many other interesting things to do.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: Sleep, Life, Excitement
“I believed in a good home, in sane and sound living, in good food, good times, work, faith and hope. I have always believed in these things. It was with some amazement that I realized I was one of the few people in the world who really believed in these things without going around making a dull middle class philosophy out of it. I was suddenly left with nothing in my hands but a handful of crazy stars.”
— Jack Kerouac, On the Road
Tagged: Life, Goodness, Home, Faith, Nothing
“Let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious.”
— Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums
Tagged: Mind, Existence, Glorious