Once upon a time there’d been a blue-eyed sea captain dining in here.
I had an overwhelming urge to close my eyes in company. I think the girls were terrified of this. “What’s he always sitting with his eyes closed for?
I wanted to know what ‘IT’ meant. ‘Ah well’ – Dean laughed – ’now you’re asking me impon-de-rables – ahem!
Dear Sirs: Do you mind if I let my heart out, splattering all its delicate essences over these following pages?
I’m afraid that you’ll never understand me fully, and because of that, sometimes you’ll be frightened, disgusted, annoyed, or pleased. The thing that makes me different from all of you is the vast inner life I have. I just thrive in this, by nature. The bigger and deeper this inner life grows, the less anyone of you will understand me. That’s okay.
The eyes of hope looking over the flare of the hood into the maw with its white line feeding in straight as an arrow, the lighting of fresh cigarettes, the buckling to lean forward to the next adventure something that’s been going on in America ever since the covered wagons clocked the deserts in three months flat –.
Oh my God, sociability is just a big smile and a big smile is nothing but teeth, I wish I could just stay up here and rest and be kind.
I think my sudden love for this girl is a truer expression of myself than anything.
All dogs love God. They’re wiser than their masters.
The straight line will take you only to death.
Papier-mache canals flowed in downtown Lowell, men smoking cigars stand by the rail spitting in the waters that reflect the drizzle hopelessness of 1926.
Across the immense plain of night lay the first Texas town, Dalhart, which I’d crossed in 1947. It lay glimmering on the dark floor of the earth, fifty miles away. The land by moonlight was all mesquites and wastes. On the horizon was the moon. She fattened, she grew huge and rusty, she mellowed and rolled, til the morning star contended and dews began to blow in our windows-and still we rolled.
You know,” I said, “I think it doesn’t make any difference to him anyway. He’s just satisfied to wander around and forget things.
This is the way I like it, when you get going there’s just no need to talk, as if we were animals and just communicated by silent telepathy.
I woke up from a deep sleep to find everybody sleeping like lambs and the car parked God knows where, because I couldn’t see out the steamy windows. I got out of the car. We were in the mountains: there was a heaven of sunrise, cool purple airs, red mountainsides, emerald pastures in valleys, dew, and transmuting clouds of gold; on the ground gopher holes, cactus, mesquite. It was time for me to drive on.
Life was life no matter where one lived.
I wished Dean and Carlo were there – then I realized they’d be out of place and unhappy. They were like the man with the dungeon stone and the gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining. The.
With the coming of Dean Moriarity began the part of my life you could call my life on the road.
What does it matter? Like the ants that have nothing to do but dig all day, I have nothing to do but do what I want and be kind and remain nevertheless uninfluenced by imaginary judgements and pray for the light.
A tremendous thing happened when Dean met Carlo Marx. Two keen minds that they are, they took to each other at the drop of a hat. Two piercing eyes glanced into two piercing eyes – the holy con-man with the shining mind, and the sorrowful poetic con-man with the dark mind that is Carlo Marx.