Active Now

ENG / LLVF - formerly of AB
Discussion » Questions » Books and Literature » What is your favorite quote from a book?
WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH

What is your favorite quote from a book?


Find & Share Quotes with Friends
 

Jack Kerouac > Quotes > Quotable Quote

Jack Kerouac

“Everything was fine with the Zen Lunatics, the nut wagon was too far away to hear us. But there was a wisdom in it all, as you'll see if you take a walk some night on a suburban street and pass house after house on both sides of the street each with the lamplight of the living room, shining golden, and inside the little blue square of the television, each living family riveting its attention on probably one show; nobody talking; silence in the yards; dogs barking at you because you pass on human feet instead of on wheels. You'll see what I mean, when it begins to appear like everybody in the world is soon going to be thinking the same way and the Zen Lunatics have long joined dust, laughter on their dust lips.”


― Jack Kerouac, The Dharma Bums

Posted - February 16, 2020
Tags : None

Responses


  • 6988
    " They've got us surrounded again, the poor bastards."     My father was one of the 'poor bastards' mentioned here in this quote from one of General Patton's tank commanders, Creighton W. Abrams.  Dad and his fellow 101 Airborne Division paratroopers, who were taking refuge in the town of Bastogne, Belgium, during WW2, were running out of bullets and the enemy was putting on the pressure. This post was edited by B.H.Wilson at February 16, 2020 3:53 PM MST
      February 16, 2020 9:53 AM MST
    4

  • 46117
    aWESOME.  tHANK YOU.
      February 16, 2020 11:09 AM MST
    1

  • 44232
    Too many to list:

      February 16, 2020 10:34 AM MST
    4

  • 46117
    fORK tRUMP AND THE HORSE HE RODE IN ON.  
      February 16, 2020 11:08 AM MST
    3

  • 22907


    “Besides the neutral expression that she wore when she was alone, Mrs. Freeman had two others, forward and reverse, that she used for all her human dealings.”


    – "Good Country People" by Flannery O'Connor
      February 16, 2020 11:13 AM MST
    3

  • 46117
    OH wonderful.  I could take just about any passage of Flannery's or Keuroac's and find gold.   I am tempted to look some up now!!!  She was a MASTER.  



    This post was edited by WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH at March 11, 2020 11:40 AM MDT
      February 16, 2020 11:16 AM MST
    2

  • 22907
    :)
    And I enjoyed your Kerouac quote, too.
    That song flew by for me - never heard it before and I like it! 10,000 Maniacs is one of those groups that I like pretty much everything I hear. I enjoyed listening for sure!
    :)

    Yeah, that Flannery - - - I'm right there with you!
      February 16, 2020 11:51 AM MST
    0

  • 46117
    I haven't heard that song in years.  I thought of it because of that quote, and I knew you would love it.  
      February 16, 2020 5:30 PM MST
    1

  • 22907
    And I did!
    :)
      February 16, 2020 6:24 PM MST
    0

  • 1152
    This isn't exactly along the lines of what your looking for, but I love this passage from Ambrose Bierce's The Devil's Dictionary:


    Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.
      February 16, 2020 11:18 AM MST
    2

  • 46117
    It is perfect.  Thank you.  It fits the question.  It is a quote.  

    And it is a great one.  
      February 16, 2020 11:20 AM MST
    1

  • 13395
    'Always  consider your boss crazy and you will always be right and remain in good standing'

    -'The Death Ship' by Bruno Traven.
      February 16, 2020 1:19 PM MST
    3

  • 46117
    OH Man.  That's as good as Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. I really like it, I mean.  
      February 16, 2020 5:31 PM MST
    1


  • 1 Corinthians chapter 13 verse 4-8

    Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.

    Love never fails.


      February 16, 2020 2:54 PM MST
    2

  • 46117
    Love is kind of a wimp.  

    (My Lucifer is Lonely)

    Sorry, this song is not about bashing love, it is about Global Warming.  

    I loved your sonnet.  OH PHUCK, you must have the devil on your team.  
    This post was edited by WM BARR . =ABSOLUTE TRASH at February 16, 2020 5:36 PM MST
      February 16, 2020 5:32 PM MST
    0

  • 14795
    Procrastination is the theif of time...
      February 16, 2020 5:55 PM MST
    1

  • 17398
    There is no way I would claim to have one favorite.  This is from my favorite book written by my favorite author!

    “I could bear the memory, but I could not bear the music that made the memory such a killing thing.”
    ― Pat Conroy, Beach Music
      February 16, 2020 7:26 PM MST
    0

  • 4631
    Hard to choose.
    I stick post-it notes in my novels, and transcribe quotes into a book kept just for that -
    in some sort of hope that it might help me learn to be a better writer.

    “Young people get the foolish idea that what is new for them must be new for everybody else too. No matter how unconventional they get, they're just repeating what others before them have done.”
    ― Yukio Mishima, After The Banquet

    “Classics aren't books that are read for pleasure. Classics are books that are imposed on unwilling students, books that are subjected to analyses of "levels of significance" and other blatt, books that are dead.”
    ― Alexei Panshin, Rite of Passage 

    “Let us leave pretty women to men with no imagination.”
    ―     Marcel Proust, The Captive and the Fugitive 

    “Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” ― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet 

     
      February 16, 2020 8:15 PM MST
    0

  • From Stephen King's Different Seasons:
    “The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them -- words shrink things that seemed limitless when they were in your head to no more than living size when they're brought out. But it's more than that, isn't it? The most important things lie too close to wherever your secret heart is buried, like landmarks to a treasure your enemies would love to steal away. And you may make revelations that cost you dearly only to have people look at you in a funny way, not understanding what you've said at all, or why you thought it was so important that you almost cried while you were saying it. That's the worst, I think. When the secret stays locked within not for want of a teller but for want of an understanding ear.”
      February 17, 2020 3:22 PM MST
    0

  • 488
    Many that live deserve death, some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement

    JRR Tolkien
    The Lord of the Rings!
      February 23, 2020 5:20 AM MST
    0

  • 182
    Just a quote I'm picking from among many favourites (Don't know what the story was or who the author was):
    ' . . . but, like all true liars, he couldn't stick to a good story when he found it'.
      March 11, 2020 9:39 AM MDT
    0