The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars


I like too many things and get all confused and hung-up running from one falling star to another till i drop. This is the night, what it does to you. I had nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.


My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them

- Kerouac

I love sleep. My life has the tendency to fall apart when I'm awake, you know?

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed

- Hemmingway

Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness.

- Allen Ginsberg

To live is the rarest thing in the world. Most people exist, that is all.

- Oscar Wilde

Some people never go crazy, What truly horrible lives they must live

- Charles Bukowski

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.

- Mark Twain

She lacks the core of sureness, she craves admiration insatiably. She lives on the reflections of herself in the eyes of others. She does not dare to be herself.

Anais Nin

Amazing quotes. Thanks for posting these!

it's so strange that you should post kerouac quotes, i was just thinking about him when i clicked on this thread.

"Where they have burned books they will, in the end, burn human beings"

- Heinrich Heinze

"God's own country, but the devil's own mess":

- Former NZ Prime Minister Richard Seddon describing the country he was ruling at the time...

"No question that the enemy has tried to spread sectarian violence. They use violence as a tool to do that."

--George W. Bush

"I aim to be a competitive nation."

--George W. Bush

"Do you have blacks, too?"

--George W. Bush to Brazilian President Fernando Cardoso, Washington, D.C., Nov. 8, 2001

"The most important thing is for us to find Osama bin Laden. It is our number one priority and we will not rest until we find him."

--George W. Bush Washington, D.C., Sept. 13, 2001

"I don't know where bin Laden is. I have no idea and really don't care. It's not that important. It's not our priority."

-- George W. Bush Washington, D.C., March 13, 2002

"There exists no politician in India daring enough to attempt to explain to the masses that cows can be eaten"
- Indira Gandhi

Don't ask me why, but I've always liked that one.

"You cannot shake hands with a clenched fist"
- Indira Gandhi

"the Unexamined Life Is Not Worth Living"

"Punctuality, regularity, discipline, industry, thoroughness, are a set of slave virtues." G. D. H. Cole

"It will yet be the proud boast of women that they never contributed a line to the Bible." George W. Foote


"The Bible and the Church have been the greatest stumbling blocks in the way of women's emancipation." Elizabeth Cady Stanton

"When I'm good, I'm very good but when I'm bad I'm better." Mae West

"The punishment which the wise suffer, who refuse to take part in government, is to live under the government of worse men." Plato

"Nothing like the cocoon of unreality when your life's fucked." Answer Me! Magazine

"Consistency is highly over valued. don't be afraid to change your mind for fear of being branded an inconsistent hypocrite." From Splatterspleen, quoted in Zines, RE SEARCH

"What's the difference between a lifestylist and a supermarket trolley? - A supermarket trolley has a mind of it's own." Anon

"The policeman on patrol has got inside our heads and his attitudes continue to be reinforced by the values of a police-loving society." Class War, from 'No Justice, Just Us' 1997

"Fellowship is heaven, and a lack of fellowship is hell; fellowship is life, and a lack of fellowship is death; and the deeds that ye do on earth, it is for fellowship's sake that ye do them." William Morris - The Dream of John Ball

"When I see an actual flesh and blood worker in conflict with his natural enemy, the policeman, I do not have to say which side I am on." George Orwell

"How could I indifferently stand by, and behold some of the very best of my fellow creatures cruelly treated by some of the very worst?" Richard Parker, Leader of the Nore Mutiny, executed 1797

"Inequality is the source of all revolutions; no compensation can make up for inequality." Aristotle, Politics

"Crime is as endemic to modern capitalism as pollution is to industrialism." Class War, from 'No Justice, Just Us'

"Disobedience, in the eyes of anyone who has read history, is man's original virtue. It is through disobedience and rebellion that progress has been made." Oscar Wilde, from 'The Soul of Man Under Socialism'

"While men tend to gain social prestige as they age, the opposite is true for women who are given little real power at any age, and are frequently viewed as one dimensional sexual objects - thus losing our usefulness as we age."

"Habit is probably the greatest block to seeing truth." RA Schwallerda Lipicz

"The only good is knowledge and the only evil is ignorance."
--Socrates

"Failure is impossible."
-- Susan B. Anthony

"I don't think of all the misery, but of all the beauty that remains."
-- Anne Frank

"In heaven, all the interesting people are missing."
--Nietzche

"A little bad taste is like a nice dash of paprika."
--Dorothy Parker

"I keep to myself because hell is other people" =Sartre

"Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life." - George Bernard Shaw

"All right, brain, I don't like you and you don't like me - so let's just do this and I'll get back to killing you with beer."
Homer Simpson.

"I always keep a stimulant handy in case I see a snake, which I also keep handy."
WC Fields
"The problem with the world is that everyone is a few drinks behind."
Humprey Bogart.

"Work is the curse of the drinking classes."
Oscar Wilde.
"Alcohol: the cause of and solution to all of life's problems."
Homer J Simpson

"I pity weak women, good or bad, but I can't like them. A woman should be strong either in her goodness or her badness." - Mae West

I really like these quotes.

I know I'm on a bit of an Indira Gandhi tip, but she really was a quotable woman:

"Martyrdom does not end something, it only a beginning" (prescient!)

"There are two kinds of people, those who do the work and those who take the credit. Try to be in the first group; there is less competition there"

"People tend to forget their duties but remember their rights"

i didn't know you, but i want you to die knowing that you are loved.
--me and you and everyone we know

^i want to print out that quote on lots of tiny slips of paper and slip them into peoples notebooks/bags/whatever when they aren't looking.

if you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. --charlie parker

Mine's in my sig.

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did you remind me of this vivian stanshall quote?

""If I had all the money I've spent on drink, I'd spend it on drink"

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they arrived dramatically at the space gun in an art deco-style autogyro

I did not, I'm afraid. It is a very good quote though. to Viv!

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"The alien girl - she called herself Dorothy - was by virtue of her survival elevated to a living sainthood. The dog was merely annoying." - from the novel Wicked by Gregory Maguire

EDIT: So I thought this thread was going to be a place for quotations from novels and I must say that is the line that most stands out in my head from any novel for some reason.

"To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance."
"There is no sin except stupidity."
"Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future."
Oscar Wilde

"Always carry a flask of whiskey in case of a snakebite. And furthermore always carry a small snake" W.C. Fields