💬 Quotes

"Einmal ist keinmal. What happens but once, says Einmal ist keinmal, might as well not have happened at all."

"The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become."

"There is no means of testing which decision is better, because there is no basis for comparison. We live everything as it comes, without warning, like an actor going on cold."

"Love is the longing for the half of ourselves we have lost."

"The heart of the kitsch is the denial of shit, in both the literal and figurative senses of the word; kitsch excludes everything from its purview which is essentially unacceptable in human existence."

"In the sunset of dissolution, everything is illuminated by the aura of nostalgia, even the guillotine."

"I could recognize him by touch alone, by smell; I would know him blind, by the way his breaths came and his feet struck the earth. I would know him in death, at the end of the world."

"He is half of my soul, as the poets say."

"Name one hero who was happy."

"I am made of memories. I am made of all the moments I have spent with him, and I will be made of them until the end of my days."

"There are no bargains between lion and man. I will kill you and eat you raw."

"We were like gods at the dawning of the world, and our joy was so bright we could see nothing else but the other."

"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time."

"What's your road, man? Holyboy road, madman road, rainbow road, guppy road, any road. It's an anywhere road for anybody anyhow."

"I realized these were all the snapshots which our children would look at with wonder, thinking their parents had lived smooth, well-oiled, joyous lives on this insane American road."

"Everything before us is somehow contained in the bitter-sweet excitement of this new journey, and we just didn't care about anything except the road itself."

"I was half-way across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future."

"Nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old. I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found."

"The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call 'out there.'"

"I thought that Mr. Clutter was a very nice gentleman. I thought so right up to the moment that I cut his throat."