Jack Kerouac Writing Quotations

It is not my fault that certain so-called bohemian elements have found in my writings something to hang their peculiar beatnik theories on.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers.

One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

It ain't whatcha write, it's the way atcha write it.

Man, wow, there's so many things to do, so many things to write! How to even begin to get it all down and without modified restraints and all hung-up on like literary inhibitions and grammatical fears...

Something that you feel will find its own form.

I spent my entire youth writing slowly with revisions and endless rehashing speculation and deleting and got so I was writing one sentence a day and the sentence had no FEELING. Goddamn it, FEELING is what I like in art, not CRAFTINESS and the hiding of feelings.

Genius gives birth, talent delivers. What Rembrandt or Van Gogh saw in the night can never be seen again. Born writers of the future are amazed already at what they're seeing now, what we'll all see in time for the first time, and then see imitated many times by made writers.

I'll go to the south of Sicily in the winter, and paint memories of Arles – I'll buy a piano and Mozart me that – I'll write long sad tales about people in the legend of my life – This part is my part of the movie, let's hear yours

Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind,

I'm writing this book because we're all going to die.

Rest and be kind, you don't have to prove anything

I have been writing my heart out all my life, but only getting a living out of it now.... ... it's not a question of the merit of art, but a question of spontaneity and sincerity and joy I say. I would like everybody in the world to tell his full life confession and tell it his own way and then we'd have something to read in our old age...

I have the right ideas, but my words are too... complicated. I need to simplify them, so that people won't get lost in the dark when they see and hear them. I want them to shine like beacons of light in a world of overly complicated darkness. One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.

Details are the Life of Prose.

Rather, I think one should write, as nearly as possible, as if he were the first person on earth and was humbly and sincerly putting on paper that which he saw and experienced and loved and lost; what his passing thoughts were and his sorrows and desires.

Never mistake talking about writing for actual writing.

Geniuses can be scintillating and geniuses can be somber, but it's that inescapable sorrowful depth that shines through-originality.

Because I cannot write my native language and have no native home anymore, and am amazed by that horrible homelessness of all French-Canadian s abroad in America.

You don't realize what a strain it is on the nerves to write or think-of-writing all day long, and to sleep full of nervous dreams, and to wake up not knowing who one is: this all stems from anxiety about finishing the book, about time 'growing short', etc., and the perpetual strain of invention.

Hell man, I know very well you didn't come to me only to want to become a writer, and after all what do I really know about it except that you've got to stick to it with the energy of a benny addict.

Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind.

Keep it kickwriting at all costs too, that is, write only what kicks you and keeps you overtime awake from sheer mad joy.

Write in recollection and amazement for yourself.

The words are clear as in the reflection of the world on the water. Therefore write the Word at once, everywhere, from now till your hand is paralyzed, for THERE will be your work for GOD, since you can not work for God in other ways, and would not, & don't know how, or bend that way, from habit, & from talent in the use & signification & arrangement of the Word.

If you dont [sic] say what you want, what's the sense of writing?

Oftentimes an originator of new language forms is called 'pretentious' by jealous talents. But it ain’t whatcha write, it’s the way atcha write it.

Anybody can write, but not everybody invents new forms of writing. Gertrude Stein invented a new form of writing and her imitators are just 'talents.' Hemingway later invented his own form also. The criterion for judging talent or genius is ephemeral, speaking rationally in this world of graphs, but one gets the feeling definitely when a writer of genius amazes him by strokes of force never seen before and yet hauntingly familiar.

Writing at least is a silent meditation even though you’re going a hundred miles an hour.