So many of the problems we have today are because people don't respect the beliefs of others.
People on a mission are unstoppable. God bless them for it. It would be a poorer, more miserable world without them.
We are in an era where censorship is creeping back in through the Patriot Act and where people are. . being intimidated not to speak about what we should be speaking about,.
Kerouac's books portray a hero and narrator free and easy, confident, sure of his rebellion against the American system. In reality, Jack was torn between Catholicism, Buddhism, and his own demon-driven pursuit of kicks, between spirit and flesh, between mom's house and the Beat coffeehouse, patriotism and subversion, men and women, society and solitude, carousing and meditation, sacred and profane, secular and divine. It's a miracle he survived as long as he did.
You can't slow down intense people. They have to burn at their own rate.
[Sometimes I] put on a ski mask and dress in old clothes, go out on the streets and beg for quarters.
We cannot change ideas in the minds of men and races with machine guns or battle ships.
New York is such a competitive place; it tears people apart. People come here and, if they can't make it in the first month, they get torn apart and they have to go back to where they came from. I don't think that's terribly healthy.
It hurts to see that everything on television is based on pillaring people. Nobody's sort of given the opportunity to be nice anymore. I think that is somewhat reflective of tragically the society that we live in today where we want to know people off their pedestal or we want to hurt, we want to harm instead of boosting and following by example. It's always about the crud of society, the black sheep of society that producers seem to think the public wants rather than my old theory of the cream rising to the top.