They were like the man with the dungeon stone and gloom, rising from the underground, the sordid hipsters of America, a new beat generation that I was slowly joining.

It was my dream that screwed up, the stupid hearthside idea that it would be wonderful to follow one great red line across America instead of trying various roads and routes.

I mean, why on earth (outside sickness and hangovers) aren't people continually drunk? I want ecstasy of the mind all the time.

Lying mouth to mouth, kiss to kiss in the pillow dark, loin to loin in unbelievable surrendering sweetness so distant from all our mental fearful abstractions it makes you wonder why men have termed God antisexual somehow (p. 148)

Because I cannot write my native language and have no native home anymore, and am amazed by that horrible homelessness of all French-Canadian s abroad in America.

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

My whole wretched life swam before my weary eyes, and I realized no matter what you do it's bound to be a waste of time in the end so you might as well go mad.