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

“We deny the parts of ourselves that we deem unacceptable rather than accepting the fact that we're all less than perfect.”
― Richard Carlson, quote from Don't Sweat the Small Stuff ... and it's all small stuff: Simple Ways to Keep the Little Things from Taking Over Your Life

“She’d never had feelings about any man that were important enough to be real romantic love. Affection, lust, yes those things. Instants in time with someone that had touched her, yes that too. But she found no one for romance that she could look up to, that was real , an individual that wasn’t made up of bits and pieces of clichés, buffeted about on the tide of their wants and the opinions of others, no goal, no point of view that they understood themselves why they held it.

She had researched him when she was assigned to protect him, she told him.
She had not understood in the
beginning.

“You were a man that had it all! Worthy and courageous military action; you grew up, came of age in war. A successful career, status in letters, a full professorship at a prestigious university if you wanted it. Accrued wealth and income enough to live however you wanted. Beautiful women in your life … you do not show the full measure of your years in either looks or fitness.

“You were a full fledged member of the oligarchy, though at a modest level. Yet you threw it all away! You started your novel, became a thorn in the side of the establishment,” she told him. “I didn’t understand until I read the fragment of manuscript that you had Jean Augereau print out for you. You were on a crusade … totally focused! I saw that you were something special then,” she told him, “That’s when you began to become very special to me!”
― William C. Samples, quote from Fe Fi FOE Comes

“...
'All the hard work of a man is to fill his mouth; yet his appetite is never satisfied."

– Ecclesiastes 6:7”
― quote from New World Translation of the Holy Scriptures

“After the dedication, Eleanor saw Bernard privately, probably at her own request. He came prepared to offer more spiritual comfort, thinking that she too might be suffering qualms of conscience over Vitry, but he was surprised to learn that she was not. Nevertheless, several matters were indeed troubling her, not the least the problems of her sister. She asked him to use his influence with the Pope to have the excommunication on Raoul and Petronilla lifted and their marriage recognised by the Church. In return, she would persuade Louis to make peace with Theobald of Champagne and recognise Pierre de la Chatre as Archbishop of Bourges.

Bernard was appalled at her brazen candour. In his opinion, these affairs were no business of a twenty-two-year-old woman. He was, in fact, terrified of women and their possible effects on him. An adolescent, first experiencing physical desire for a young girl, he had been so filled with self-disgust that he had jumped into a freezing cold pond & remained there until his erection subsided. He strongly disapproved of his sister, who had married a rich man; because she enjoyed her wealth, he thought of her as a whore, spawned by Satan to lure her husband from the paths of righteousness, and refused to have anything to do with her. Nor would he allow his monks any contact with their female relatives.

Now there stood before him the young, worldly, and disturbingly beautiful Queen of France, intent upon meddling in matters that were not her concern. Bernard's worst suspicions were confirmed: here, beyond doubt, was the source of that "Counsel of the Devil" that had urged the King on to disaster and plunged him into sin and guilt. His immediate reaction was to admonish Eleanor severely.”
― Alison Weir, quote from Eleanor of Aquitaine: A Life

“The layers of his gleaming black hair were thick and neatly cut, and his tanned face glowed from a precise shave. He had a long, straight nose and a voluptuary's mouth.
And he had a pair of remarkable blue eyes that approximated no other shade she had ever seen. Except, perhaps, at the shop where the local chemist made batches of ink by boiling Indigofera plants and copper sulfate together for days until they formed a blue so dark and deep that it approached violet. And yet his eyes did not have the angelic quality one might associate with such a color. They were shrewd, seasoned, as if he had gazed far too often at an unsavory side of life that she herself had never seen.”
― Lisa Kleypas, quote from Suddenly You

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.