“And this is not the happiness of a magazine writer who sends in his gay little philosophy of life to the editor for the one paragraph spread in front of the magazine: This is a serious happiness full of doubts and strengths. I wonder if happiness is possible. It is a state of mind, but I'd hate to be a bore all my life, if only because of those I love around me. Happiness can change into unhappiness just for the sake of change.”
― Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
― Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
“All the souls to explore! - It's not so necessary to love, really, as it is to settle something deep with all of those who really matter. Love and hate are the same things, differently sifted through personal... pride, or what have you... personal pride or even just personal-ness.”
― Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
― Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
“And what do I think about? What thoughts do I have! - What thoughts! a whole host, multitude, and world of thoughts, I keep devising new ones and reworking old ones, some of the old ones are concluded and are only thought of as conclusions, whole worlds of new ones come crashing into my fingers, and it never ends.”
― Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
― Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
“It was love at first sight, at last sight, at ever and ever sight.”
― Lolita
― Lolita
“Powerful winds that crack the boughs of November! - and the bright calm sun, untouched by the furies of the earth, abandoning the earth to darkness, and wild forlornness, and night, as men shiver in their coats and hurry home. And then the lights of home glowing in those desolate deeps. There are the stars, though! - high and sparkling in a spiritual firmament. We will walk in the windsweeps, gloating in the envelopment of ourselves, seeking the sudden grinning intelligence of humanity below these abysmal beauties. Now the roaring midnight fury and the creaking of our hinges and windows, now the winder, now the understanding of the earth and our being on it: this drama of enigmas and double-depths and sorrows and grave joys, these human things in the elemental vastness of the windblown world.”
― Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
― Windblown World: The Journals of Jack Kerouac 1947-1954
Ashley Lauren’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Ashley Lauren’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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