“All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.”
“One brick on top of another, such is the measure of man.”
“For the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: ‘If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?’ And whenever the answer has been ‘No’ for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.”
(Source: quora.com)
“There was nothing clear about the things he said, but what he meant to say was somehow made pure and clear.”
I woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn’t know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I’d never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn’t know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn’t scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost. I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future, and maybe that’s why it happened right there and then, that strange red afternoon.
Jack Kerouac | On The Road | p15
“‘We’ve got a long way to go,’ preambled Dean, ‘and so you must take every indulgence and deal with every single detail you can bring to mind— and still it won’t all be told. Easy, easy.’”
“
“Come on, Galatea, Marie, let’s go hit the jazz joints and forget it. Dean will be dead someday. Then what can you say to him?”
“The sooner he’s dead the better,” said Galatea, and she spoke officially for almost everyone in the room.
”“This was what we sensed about the ghost on the sidewalk. I looked out the Window. He was alone in the doorway, digging the Street. Bitterness, recriminations, advice, mortality, sadness–everything behind him, and ahead of him was the ragged and ecstatic joy of pure being.”
“I woke up on the roadside, daydreamin’ ‘bout the way things sometimes are.”
“
I don’t know if the stars rule the world
Or if Tarot or playing cards
Can reveal anything.
I don’t know if the rolling of dice
Can lead to any conclusion.
But I also don’t know
If anything is attained
By living the way most people do.
Yes, I don’t know
If I should believe in this daily rising sun
Whose authenticity no one can guarantee me,
Or if it would be better (because better or more convenient)
To believe in some other sun,
One that shines even at night,
Some profound incandescence of things,
Surpassing my understanding.
For now…
(Let’s take it slow)
For now
I have an absolutely secure grip on the stair-rail,
I secure it with my hand –
This rail that doesn’t belong to me
And that I lean on as I ascend…
Yes… I ascend…
I ascend to this:
I don’t know if the stars rule the world.
