Between incomprehensible and incoherent sits the madhouse. I am not in the madhouse
Jack Kerouac to Carl Solomon.
We are actually fourth dimensional beings in a third dimensional body inhabiting a second dimensional world!
Neal Cassady
All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.
Jack Kerouac
I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked.
Allen Ginsberg (Howl)
““The so-called Beat Generation was a whole bunch of people, of all different nationalities, who came to the conclusion that society sucked.””
— Amiri Baraka, an American writer and poet
Beat doesn't mean tired or bushed, so much as it means beato, the Italian for beatific; to be in a state of beatitude, like St. Francis, trying to love all life, trying to be utterly sincere with everyone, practicing endurance, kindness, cultivating joy of the heart. How can this be done in our mad modern world of multiplicities and millions? By practicing a little solitude, going off by yourself once in a while to store up that most precious of golds: the vibrations of sincerity.
— Jack Kerouac, Good Blonde & Others (Grey Fox Press, January 1, 1993) (via Whiskey River)