Big Sur Quotes

“Out yonder they may curse, revile, and torture one another, defile all the human instincts, make a shambles of creation (if it were in their power), but here, no, here, it is unthinkable, here there is abiding peace, the peace of God, and the serene security created by a handful of good neighbors living at one with the creature world.”
― Henry Miller, Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch

“Is Virgin you trying to
fathom me”
― Jack Kerouac

“Books, shmooks, this sickness has got me wishing if I can ever get out of this I'll gladly become a millworker and shut my big mouth.”
― Jack Kerouac

“I have tonight begun reading a stupid, shitty book by Kerouac called Big Sur, and I would give a ball to wake up tomorrow on some empty ridge with a herd of beatniks grazing in the clearing about 200 yards below the house. And then to squat with the big boomer and feel it on my shoulder with the smell of grease and powder and, later, a little blood.”
― Hunter S. Thompson, The Proud Highway: Saga of a Desperate Southern Gentleman, 1955-1967

“O how wonderful life is, how miraculous, God made this and God made that", "how do you know he doesn't hate what He did: He might even be drunk and not noticing what he went and done tho of course that's not true”
― Jack Kerouac

“No bitter complaints about society whatever from this grand and ideal man who really loves me moreover as if I deserve it, but I'm bursting to explain everything to him, not even Big Sur but the past several years, but there's no chance with everybody yakking--And in fact I can see in Cody's eyes that he can see in my own eyes the regret we both feel that recently we haven't had chances to talk whatever, like we used to do driving across America and back in the old road days, too many people now want to talk to us and tell us their stories, we've been hemmed in and surrounded and outnumbered--The circle's closed in on the old heroes of the night--”
― Jack Kerouac