The second installment of my favorite quotes applied to the college life.
Jack Kerouac is an author of an age group—as I get older, I feel as though I'm outgrowing his wild, sprawling life of adventure, turning to a stagnant love for domesticity. Doesn't mean his "interior monologues" aren't still funny and strangely relatable.
From On the Road
1. “The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view”
Directed at some of my more close-minded professors.
2. “Boys and girls in America have such a sad time together; sophistication demands that they submit to sex immediately without proper preliminary talk. Not courting talk — real straight talk about souls, for life is holy and every moment is precious.”
As I lament the college hookup culture, looking for the one I'd marry.
3. “A pain stabbed my heart, as it did every time I saw a girl I loved who was going the opposite direction in this too-big world.”
Cue Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me."
4. “I was surprised, as always, by how easy the act of leaving was, and how good it felt. The world was suddenly rich with possibility.”
When I think about the day I left home for college.
5. “My aunt once said that the world would never find peace until men fell at their women's feet and asked for forgiveness.”
When my favorite f*ckboy apologizes for several drunken calls and I tell him we can't be friends anymore.
From The Dharma Bums
6.“One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple.”
When my English essay is three pages under the limit but it's due in 21 minutes so I submit it anyway.
7. “It all ends in tears anyway.”
After realizing I can't graduate in time and I might as well drop my minors and maybe my major while I'm ahead.
8. “Colleges being nothing but grooming schools for the middle-class non-identity which usually finds its perfect expression on the outskirts of the campus in rows of well-to-do houses with lawns and television sets in each living room with everybody looking at the same thing and thinking the same thing at the same time while the Japhies of the world go prowling in the wilderness to hear the voice crying in the wilderness, to find the ecstacy of the stars, to find the dark mysterious secret of the origin of faceless wonderless crapulous civilization.”
(WHY AM I HERE?)
