And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhat far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded - at least that's what I thought then.
Jack KerouacI felt the sensation of each of the directions I mentally and emotionally turned into amazed at all the possible directions you can take with different motives that come in like it can make you a different person โ Iโve often thought of this since childhood of suppose instead of going up Columbus as I usually did Iโd turn into Filbert would something happen that at the time is insignificant enough but would be like enough to influence my whole life in the end? โ Whatโs in store for me in the direction I donโt take?
Jack KerouacThe air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.
Jack KerouacI woke up as the sun was reddening; and that was the one distinct time in my life, the strangest moment of all, when I didn't know who I was - I was far away from home, haunted and tired with travel, in a cheap hotel room I'd never seen, hearing the hiss of steam outside, and the creak of the old wood of the hotel, and footsteps upstairs, and all the sad sounds, and I looked at the cracked high ceiling and really didn't know who I was for about fifteen strange seconds. I wasn't scared; I was just somebody else, some stranger, and my whole life was a haunted life, the life of a ghost.
Jack Kerouac