Jack Kerouac Quotes

Is it you and I who are crazy, or is it everybody else?

I have toyed with the idea of playing it straight. But, like I say, I really believe we are all out of our minds at some level.

--Why are we fighting them? --They're mad. We're sane. --How do we know? --That we're sane? --Yes. --Am I sane? --To all appearances. --And you, do you consider yourself sane? --I do. --Well, there you have it. --But don't they also consider themselves sane? --I think they know. Deep down. That they're not sane. --How must that make them feel? --Terrible, I should think. They must fight ever more fiercely, in order to deny what they know to be true. That they are not sane.

A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

I proved to my own satisfaction that I am madder than I think.

The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane.

Sometimes I think that if I wasn't crazy... I'd go crazy.

If you went crazy, would you know it?

Oh yes! The one man in the world who never believes he's mad is the madman.

Perhaps if you know you are insane then you are not insane. Or you are becoming sane, finally.

From time to time, I do consider that I might be mad. Like any self-respecting lunatic, however, I am always quick to dismiss any doubts about my sanity.

This clarity made me able to behave normally, which posed some interesting questions. Was everybody seeing this stuff and acting as though they weren't? Was insanity just a matter of dropping the act? If some people didn't see these things, what was the matter with them? Were they blind or something? These questions had me unsettled.

When the whole world is crazy, it doesn't pay to be sane.

In a crazy world, it's only your insanity that will keep you sane

There's still always the possibility that I've gone totally, clinically cuckoo. But somehow I don't think so anymore. An article I once read said that crazy people don't worry about being crazy - that's the whole problem.

Everyone's crazy anyway. And those who think they aren't, are the ones who are even crazier - because they're in denial.

For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity.

I'm not much crazier than anybody else, but I'm not much saner.

In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom.

Insane people are always sure that they are fine. It is only the sane people who are willing to admit that they are crazy.

To some extent, people who are insane are nonconformists, and society and their family wish they would live what appear to be useful lives.

I may be crazy, but it keeps me from going insane.

There is only one difference between a madman and me. The madman thinks he is sane. I know I am mad.

I'm probably more insane than most people and less than a lot of others. I'm somewhere in the middle.

I'm not crazy in my head. Maybe in everybody else's.