It is possible for the human spirit to win after all.”
JACK KEROUAC
Photo: Joelk75
Archives for posts with tag: writers’ quotes
Born on March 12, 1922 as Jean-Louis Lebris de Kerouac at 9 Lupine Road in Lowell, Massachusetts, to French-Canadian parents, Beat novelist Jack Kerouac lived a short, eventful life (he passed away at age 47) — but his books and poetry continue to inspire. His mantra was ecstasy — and he encouraged all of us to find joy everywhere and in everything.
“…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.” JACK KEROUAC, On the Road (1957)
“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 (1958)
Photo: Jacqueline Kennedy, circa early 1960s, on the presidential plane reading DHARMA BUMS by Jack Kerouac.
“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
JACK KEROUAC, The Dharma Bums
Painting: “There and Here, State I” by Edward Ruscha (2007)
“Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air–moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh–felt as if it were being exhaled into one’s face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing. Honeysuckle, swamp flowers, magnolia, and the mystery smell of the river scented the atmosphere, amplifying the intrusion of organic sleaze. It was aphrodisiac and repressive, soft and violent at the same time. In New Orleans, in the French Quarter, miles from the barking lungs of alligators, the air maintained this quality of breath, although here it acquired a tinge of metallic halitosis, due to fumes expelled by tourist buses, trucks delivering Dixie beer, and, on Decatur Street, a mass-transit motor coach named Desire.”
TOM ROBBINS, Jitterbug Perfume
Find Tom Robbins‘ 1990 novel Jitterbug Perfume at Amazon.com.
“That night, after the movie, driving my father’s car along the country roads, I began to wonder how real the landscape truly was, and how much of a dream is a dream.” Don DeLillo, AMERICANA
Photo: Candida Godson
“Delicious autumn! My very soul is wedded to it, and if I were a bird I would fly about the earth seeking the successive autumns.”
GEORGE ELIOT, pen name of Mary Ann Evans (1819-1880), author of Silas Marner
Painting: “Autumn Bird” by ElfShoppe, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Prints available at etsy.com.
“Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words, and some of the words are theirs. I am haunted by waters.” NORMAN MACLEAN, A River Runs Through It and Other Stories
PHOTO: “The Tetons and the Snake River” (1942), Grand Teton National Park, Wyoming, by Ansel Adams. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the National Park Service. (79-AAG-1)
“All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you: the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.” ERNEST HEMINGWAY
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American author and journalist. His economical and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the mid-1950s, and won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1954. He published seven novels, six short story collections, and two non-fiction works. Three novels, four collections of short stories, and three non-fiction works were published posthumously. Many of these are considered classics of American literature. (Read more at Wikipedia.org)
PHOTO: Ernest Hemingway by Jeff Morgan, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED, Used by Permission
“A very little key will unlock a very heavy door.” CHARLES DICKENS
Photo: Joyce 445, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Silver Birch Press 