Quotes from The Subterraneans

“The details are the life of it, I insist, say everything on your mind, don’t hold back, don’t analyze or anything as you go along, say it out.”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“ah, you always go for the ones who don't really want you”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“I felt the sensation of each of the directions I mentally and emotionally turned into amazed at all the possible directions you can take with different motives that come in like it can make you a different person — I’ve often thought of this since childhood of suppose instead of going up Columbus as I usually did I’d turn into Filbert would something happen that at the time is insignificant enough but would be like enough to influence my whole life in the end? — What’s in store for me in the direction I don’t take?”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“How clear the realization one is going mad -- the mind has a silence, nothing happens in the physique, urine gathers in your loins, your ribs contract.”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“DEAR BABY, Isn’t it good to know winter is coming—”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“I feel impossibly sad and like I'll die, what can we do?”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“I would fave preferred the happy man to the unhappy poems he's left us”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“Why did I allow myself to be bored ever in the past and to compensate for it got high or drunk or rages or all the tricks people have because they want anything but serene understanding of just what there is, which is after all so much.”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“and rain will fall on our eaves.”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“... this girl I was SEEKING to get involved with as if not enough trouble already or other old romances hadn't taught me that message of pain, keep asking for it, for life”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“O love, fled me - or do telepathies cross sympathetically in the night?”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“I stood in the middle of the room flipping and Pusher was plucking at the guitar, just one string, and I went up to him and said, 'Man don't pluck those dirty notes at ME,' and like he just got up without a word and left. [Mardou]”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“but I should have known from her original announcement of independence to believe in the sincerity of her distaste for involvement, instead hurling on at her as if and because in fact I wanted to be hurt and 'lacerate' myself”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“(difficult to make a real confession and show what happened when you're such an egomaniac all you can do is take off on big paragraphs about minor details about yourself and the big sole details about others go sitting and waiting around)”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“...poor examples because of mechanical needs of typing, of the flow of river sounds, words, dark, leading to the future and attesting to the madness, hollowness, ring and roar of my mind which blessed or unblessed is where trees sing -- in a funny wind -- well-being believes he'll go to heaven -- a word to the wise is enough -- 'Smart went Crazy”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“...the innocent seriousness with which she told her story and I'd listened to so often and myself told-- wide eyed hugging in heaven together-- hipsters of America in the 1950's sitting in a dim room-- the clash of the streets beyond the window's bare soft sill.”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“I could have made my whole life like that morning just on the strength of pure understanding and willingness to live and go along, God it was all the most beautiful thing that ever happened to me in its own way - but it was all sinister.”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“now this warm thought of greatness is a big chill in the wind—for”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“Lissen Percepied do you believe in freedom?-then say what you want, it's poetry, poetry, all of it is poetry, great prose is poetry, great verse is poetry.”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“you always go for the ones who don’t really want you—she really wanted Adam Moorad, she had just been rejected coldly and subterraneanly by Julien—she was interested in thin ascetic strange intellectuals of San Francisco and Berkeley and not in big paranoiac bums of ships and railroads and novels and all that hatefulness which in myself is to myself so evident and so to others too—though and because ten years younger than I seeing none of my virtues which anyway had long been drowned under years of drugtaking and desiring to die, to give up, to give it all up and forget it all, to die in the dark star—it was I stuck out my hand, not she—ah time.”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“to the Red Drum for sets, to hear Bird, whom I saw distinctly digging Mardou several times also myself directly into my eye looking to search if really I was that great writer I thought myself to be as if he knew my thoughts and ambitions or remembered me from other night clubs and other coasts, other Chicagos—not a challenging look but the king and founder of the bop generation at least the sound of it in digging his audience digging the eyes, the secret eyes him-watching, as he just pursed his lips and let great lungs and immortal fingers work,”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“Mientras duermo los tres se van (hacen bien) a la playa, en el coche de Sand, a treinta kilómetros de la casa; los muchachos se zambullen, nadan, Mardou se pasea por las orillas de la eternidad, mientras sus pies y los dedos de sus pies que yo tanto amo se imprimen en la arena clara, pisando las conchillas y las anémonas y las algas secas y empobrecidas, lavadas por las mareas y el viento que le despeina el cabello corto, como si la Eternidad se hubiera encontrado con Heavenly Lane (así se me ocurrió mientras estaba en la cama). (Al imaginarla por otra parte paseándose sin rumbo, con una mueca de aburrimiento, sin saber qué hacer, abandonada por Leo el Sufriente, y realmente sola e incapaz de conversar acerca de todos los fulanos, menganos y zutanos de la historia del arte con Bromberg y Sand, ¿qué podía hacer?)”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“Y es así como, una vez obtenida la esencia de su amor, ahora erijo grandes construcciones verbales, y de ese modo en realidad lo traiciono, repitiendo calumnias como quien tiende las sábanas sucias al mundo; y las suyas, las nuestras, durante los dos meses de nuestro amor (así lo creí) sólo fueron lavadas una vez, porque ella era una subterránea solitaria que se pasaba los días abstraída y decidida a llevarlas al lavadero, pero de pronto se descubre que ya es casi de noche y demasiado tarde, y las sábanas ya están grises, hermosas para mí porque así son más suaves.”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

“Марду в конце концов сказала мне: "Я бы предпочла счастливого человека несчастливым стихам которые он нам оставил,”
― Jack Kerouac, quote from The Subterraneans

About the author

Popular quotes

“And in its shade our woes will fall Pain and suffering, sorrow and all They’ll fall like glistening diamond drops You see, the tree, our pain, it stops.”
― Heather Burch, quote from In the Light of the Garden

“Grandpa Byron's eyes move left and right as he chooses his words. "I tried to. But I think I left it a bit late with your dad. He preferred computers to his own imagination." He looks at me, a bit sadly, I think. "A lot of people do these days.”
― quote from Time Travelling with a Hamster

“A Servant of History

Her eyes were of the lightest blue as if time had rinsed away most of the colour, but there was a liveliness inside them.”
― Ron Rash, quote from Nothing Gold Can Stay: Stories

“She woke up thin. She loved it when that happened.”
― Jolie Booth, quote from The Girl Who'll Rule the World (Saturn Returns, #1)

“Who among us is not ever-changing? Ever evolving into someone new? Maybe someone better... or someone worse.”
― Sherrilyn Kenyon, quote from Born of Legend

Interesting books

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.