Great Throughts Treasury

"When you?ve understood this scripture, throw it away. If you can?t understand this scripture, throw it away. I insist on your freedom."

"Where Buddha and Tao Meet: stop seeking pleasures, satisfy your natural wants; break clean from ambitions, escape from the urge to improve, be like a kid and salvation will come of itself."

"While looking for the light, you may suddenly be devoured by the darkness and find the true light"

"Who can leap the world's ties and sit with me among white clouds?"

"While they will sleep three (do well) to the beach, in the car Sand, thirty miles from the house; Boys dive, swim, Mardou wanders the shores of eternity, his feet and his toes that I love so much are printed on clear sand, treading the shells and anemones and algae dry and impoverished, washed by the tides and the wind ruffles her hair short, as if Eternity had met Heavenly Lane (so it occurred to me while I was in bed). (On the other hand imagine wandering aimlessly, with a look of boredom, not knowing what to do, abandoned by Leo the Suffering, and really alone and unable to talk about all the dudes, and of art history with Bromberg Sand and what could I do)?"

"Whither goest thou, America, in thy shiny car in the night?"

"Where'd you learn to do all these funny things?' he laughed. 'And you know I say funny but there's sumpthin so durned sensible about 'em. Here I am killin myself drivin this rig back and forth from Ohio to L.A. and I make more money than you ever had in your whole life as a hobo, but you're the one who enjoys life and not only that but you do it without workin or a whole lot of money. Now who's smart, you or me?' And he had a nice home in Ohio with wife, daughter, Christmas tree, two cars, garage, lawn, lawnmower, but he couldn't enjoy any of it because he really wasn't free."

"Where is he tonight? Where am I? Where are you?"

"Who knows, my God, but that the universe is not one vast sea of compassion actually, the veritable holy honey, beneath all this show of personality and cruelty?"

"Whoo, Frisco nights, the end of the continent and the end of doubt, all dull doubt and tomfoolery, good-by"

"Who doesn't feel studious when he doesn't have a girl with a Riviera suntan?"

"Why did God make all this all so decayable and dieable and harmable and wants to make me realize and scream?"

"With the emergence of Dean Moriarty began the part of my life you could call my life on the road"

"Why is he so mad about white tiled sinks and ?kitchen machinery? he calls it? People have good hearts whether or not they live like Dharma Bums."

"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."

"With frantic Dean I was rushing through the world without a chance to see it."

"Why think about that when all the golden land's ahead of you and all kinds of unforeseen events wait lurking to surprise you and make you glad you're alive to see?"

"Wishing there was a Personal God in all this impersonal matter."

"Will you love me in December as you do in May?"

"Work from your own side of literature/ and room fetish, not publishing's -"

"Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea."

"Yeah man, you know to me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sitting there bein perfectly perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waitin for us to stop all our frettin and foolin."

"Write in recollection and amazement for yourself"

"Yet this book is to prove that no matter how you travel, how 'successful' your tour, or foreshortened, you always learn something and learn to change your thoughts."

"Yeah, I said, but you're an artist. You don't believe in decency and honesty and gratitude. Where shall we eat?"

"You can't fight City Hall. It keeps changing its name."

"You are the equal of the idol who has given you your inspiration."

"You can not live in this world, but there is no other place to go."

"You don't know what to say to me because the kingdom is within...flesh and blood's dream...so you fly now, pay later, all of us...I mean actually it's PAY NOW, FLY LATER."

"You can't teach the old maestro a new tune."

"You guys are going somewhere or just going? - We do not understand the question, but it was a damn good question."

"You just wait patiently like you always do in America among those apparently endless policemen and their endless laws against (no laws for) -- but the moment you cross the little wire gate and you're in Mexico, you feel like you just sneaked out of school when you told the teacher you were sick and she told you you could go home, 2 o'clock in the afternoon."

"You have absolutely no regard but yourself and your damned kicks. All you think about is what's hanging between your legs and how much money or fun you can get out of people and then you just throw them aside. Not only that but you're silly about it. It never occurs to you that life is serious and that there are people trying to make something decent out of it instead of just goofing all the time."

"You know to me a mountain is a Buddha. Think of the patience, hundreds of thousands of years just sittin there bein perfectly silent and like praying for all living creatures in that silence and just waitin for us to stop all our frettin and foolin."

"You know when I was a little kid in Oregon I didn't feel that I was and American at all, with all that suburban ideal and sex repression and general dreary newspaper gray censorship of all our real human values but and when I discovered Buddhism and all I suddenly felt that I had lived in a previous lifetime innumerable ages ago and now because of the faults and sins in that lifetime I was being degraded to a more grievous domain of existence and my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom."

"You spend a whole life of non-interference with the wishes of others, including politicians and the rich, and nobody bothers you and you cut along and make it your own way."

"You?d never care to plant some roots in society, I suppose, mused the other."

"You were my last chance' she's said but don't all women say that? - But can it be by 'last chance' she doesn't mean mere marriage but some profoundly sad realization of something in me she really needs to go on living, at least that impression coming across anyway on the force of all the gloom we've shared."

"You never die enough to cry."

"You'd be surprised how little I knew, even up to yesterday."

"You'll be sorry someday. Why don't you ever understand what I'm trying to tell you: it's with your six sense that you're fooled into believing not only that you have six senses, but that you contact an actual outside world with them. If it wasn't for your eyes, you wouldn't see me. If it wasn't for your ears, you wouldn't hear that airplane. If it wasn't for your nose, you wouldn't smell that midnight mint. If it wasn't for your tongue taster, you wouldn't taste the difference between A and B. If it wasn't for your body, you wouldn't feel Princess. There is no me, no airplane, no mind, no Princess, no nothing, you for krissakes do you want to go on being fooled every damn minute of your life?"

"Your art is the Holy Ghost blowing through your soul"

"Your mind makes out the orange by seeing it, hearing it, touching it, smelling it, tasting it and thinking about it but without this mind, you call it, the orange would not be seen or heard or smelled or tasted or even mentally noticed, it's actually, that orange, depending on your mind to exist! Don't you see that? By itself it's a no-thing, it's really mental, it's seen only of your mind. In other words it's empty and awake."

"You're a genius all the time."

"Your Buddhism has made you mean Ray and makes you even afraid to take your clothes off for a simple healthy orgy."