All I Am Jack Quotes & Sayings

I am a jack-of-all-trades. I edit and teach and at times desire to be a clothing designer or an artist (one who doesn't draw or paint or sew) and I write everything but poetry and I am a mother and a social maniac and a misanthrope and a burgeoning self-help guru and a girl who wants to look pretty and a girl who wants to look sexy and a girl who wants to look girly and a woman in her middle forties who wishes not to look like anything at all, who wishes sometimes to vanish. — Heidi Julavits

I am writing this book because we're all going to die - In the loneliness of my own life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother faraway, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our deaths, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid: with just this one pride and consolation: my broke heart in the general despair and opened up inwards to the Lord, I made a supplication in this dream — Jack Kerouac

Even Socrates, who lived a very frugal and simple life, loved to go to the market. When his students asked about this, he replied, I love to go and see all the things I am happy without. — Jack Kornfield

Oh, make no mistake. I am no callow, ardent youth. I am an elderly man, broken in health and body, and soon to die. I am a scientist and a philosopher. I, as all the generations of philosophers before me, know woman for what she is - her weaknesses and meannesses and immodesties and ignobilities, her earth-bound feet and her eyes that have never seen the stars. But - and the everlasting, irrefragable fact remains: Her feet are beautiful, her eyes are beautiful, her arms and breasts are paradise, her charm is potent beyond all charm that has ever dazzled man; and, as the pole willy nilly draws the needle, just so, willy nilly, does she draw man. — Jack London

I'm glad I know you Dave" -- "Me too Jack" -- "Why? " "Maybe I wanted to stand on my head in the snow to prove it but I do, am glad, will be glad, after all that's right there's nothing else for us to do but solve these damn problems and I've got one right here in my pants for Romana" "But that's so sick and tired to call life a problem that can be solved" -- "Yes but I'm just repeating what I read in the dead pigeon textbooks" -- "But Dave I love you" -- "Okay I'll be right over. — Jack Kerouac

How miserably hypocritical, you might say, but no sooner am I offered a chance to flee Hell than I yearn to stay. Few families hold their relations as closely as do prisons. Few marriages sustain the high level of passion that exists between criminals and those who seek to bring them to justice. It's no wonder the Zodiac Killer flirted so relentlessly with the police. Or that Jack the Ripper courted and baited detectives with his - or her - coy letters. We all wish to be pursued. We all long to be desired. — Chuck Palahniuk

I am nature. Nature is me. What I create is what I must create. That I create it is fundamental. I am both anonymous and very precious since I belong to all growth which is life. Therefore I must grow well. What I shape I must shape well. — Jack Shadbolt

Because I cannot write my native language and have no native home anymore, and am amazed by that horrible homelessness of all French-Canadian s abroad in America. — Jack Kerouac

Get it off," she said, jerking their bound wrists up and holding them up under his nose.
"I thought perhaps we might at least introduce ourselves," he said lightly.
"Get it off!"
"What shall I call you?" he asked as he pulled her to the table and removed the silver dome on the platter. Mutton stew, by the smell of it. Not a single knife to be had. "Lover?"
"Rest assured you'll never need to call me anything at all!" she said with admirable conviction.
"You may reduce your rancor and save it for when you might need it," he said calmly. "I am as enchanted by this arrangement as you are. May I remove your brooch?"
"Pardon?"
"Your brooch," he said, looking at the small gold ring-shaped brooch that held her shawl on her shoulder.
Her eyes narrowed.
Jack knew that look and gestured to their wrists. "Rein in your thoughts, lass. I need something to get it off. — Julia London

This creative tension between wonderful and terrible is named so well by Gerard Manley Hopkins, as only poets can. Even the long title of his poem reveals his acceptance of the ever-changing flow of Heraclites and also his trust in the final outcome: "That Nature Is a Heraclitean Fire and of the Comfort of the Resurrection." Flesh fade, and mortal trash fall to the residuary worm; world's wildfire, leave but ash: In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, — Richard Rohr

Then a complete silence fell over everybody; where once Dean would have talked his way out, he now fell silent himself, but standing in front of everybody, ragged and broken and idiotic, right under the lightbulbs, his bony mad face covered with sweat and throbbing veins, saying, "Yes, yes, yes," as though tremendous revelations were pouring into him all the time now, and I am convinced they were, and the others suspected as much and were frightened. He was BEAT-the root, the soul of Beatific. — Jack Kerouac

As I write these lines I lift my eyes and look seaward. I am on the beach of Waikiki on the island of Oahu. Far, in the azure sky, the trade-wind clouds drift low over the blue-green turquoise of the deep sea. Nearer, the sea is emerald and light olive-green. Then comes the reef, where the water is all slaty purple flecked with red. Still nearer are brighter greens and tans, lying in alternate stripes and showing where sandbeds lie between the living coral banks. Through and over and out of these wonderful colours tumbles and thunders a magnificent surf. — Jack London

Morrell, ever a true comrade, too had a splendid brain. In fact, and I who am about to die have the right to say it without incurring the charge of immodesty, the three best minds in San Quentin from the Warden down were the three that rotted there together in solitary. And here at the end of my days, reviewing all that I have known of life, I am compelled to the conclusion that strong minds are never docile. The stupid men, the fearful men, the men ungifted with passionate rightness and fearless championship - these are the men who make model prisoners. I thank all gods that Jake Oppenheimer, Ed Morrell, and I were not model prisoners. — Jack London

I am the kind of dude that would go to your seventh grade class and sit at the back of the classroom and stare at all your butts. — Jack Barakat

I am first of all a white man, and only then a socialist. — Jack London

Down in the valley, leaves fall from trees, the branches are bare. All the flowers have faded, their blossoms once so beautiful. The frost attacks many herbs and kills them. I grieve. But if the winter is so cold, there must be new joys. Help me sing a joy of a hundred thousand times greater than the buds of May. I will sing of roses on the red cheeks of my lady. Could I win her favor, this lovely lady would give me such joy I would need no other. (Jack)
What are you saying? (Lorelei)
Noble lady, I ask nothing of you save that you should accept me as your servant. I will serve you as a good lord should serve, whatever the reward may be. Here I am, then, at your orders, sincere and humble, gay and courteous. You are not, after all, a bear or lion, and would not kill me, surely, if I put myself between your hands. I love you, my lady, Lorelei. Marry me and I swear I shall never again do or say anything to harm you and I will slay anyone who does. (Jack) — Kinley MacGregor

The grapes on a score of rolling hills are red with autumn flame. Across Sonoma Mountain wisps of sea fog are stealing. The afternoon sun smoulders in the drowsy sky. I have everything to make me glad I am alive. I am filled with dreams and mysteries. I am all sun and air and sparkle. I am vitalized, organic. — Jack London

When all is said and done, I hope people will judge me by who I am, not by what I've written. — Jack Tate

I want to attempt a thing like that and am frightened by these trifles," he thought, with an odd smile. "Hm ... yes, all is in a man's hands and he lets it all slip from cowardice, that's an axiom. It would be interesting to know what it is men are most afraid of. Taking a new step, uttering a new word is what they fear most ... . But I am talking too much. It's because I chatter that I do nothing. Or perhaps it is that I chatter because I do nothing. I've learned to chatter this last month, lying for days together in my den thinking ... of Jack the Giant — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Just accept me for what I am. Dont expect me to remain within your boundaries all the time!!. I cant do that. — Nelson Jack

Where'd you learn to do all these funny things?' he laughed. 'And you know I say funny but there's sumpthin so durned sensible about 'em. Here I am killin myself drivin this rig back and forth from Ohio to L.A. and I make more money than you ever had in your whole life as a hobo, but you're the one who enjoys life and not only that but you do it without workin or a whole lot of money. Now who's smart, you or me?' And he had a nice home in Ohio with wife, daughter, Christmas tree, two cars, garage, lawn, lawnmower, but he couldn't enjoy any of it because he really wasn't free. — Jack Kerouac

I am a commercial artist because I paint to earn a living. We who earn money from what we produce are all commercial artists. — Jack White

Here I am, a not over-good business man, a second-rate engineer. I can make poor mechanical drawings. I play the piano after a fashion. In fact, I am one of those proverbial Jack-of-all-trades who are usually failures. Why I am not, I can't tell you. — Charles M. Schwab

What did I think I was doing? What did she think she was doing? When I want to kiss people in that way now, with mouths and tongues and all that, it's because I want other things too: sex, Friday nights at the cinema, company and conversation, fused networks of family and friends, Lemsips brought to me in bed when I am ill, a new pair of ears for my records and CDs, maybe a little boy called Jack and a little girl called Holly or Maisie, I haven't decided yet. But I didn't want any of those things from Alison Ashworth. Not children, because we were children, and not Friday nights at the pictures, because we went Saturday mornings, and not Lemsips, because my mum did that, not even sex, especially not sex, please God not sex, the filthiest and most terrifying invention of the early seventies. — Nick Hornby

Jack rolled onto his stomach and clutched a pillow over his head. Sure, no problem. Testify against some drug lords. All in a day's work. Get a new name and get yourself relocated thousands of miles away. No sweat. Assassins coming after you? Check. Conscience-ridden hit men spiriting you away? Check. Hiding out in a remote cabin? Oh, got that one covered. Develop unseemly crush on ruthless hired killer?
Jack sighed. I am one incurable illness away from a Lifetime Movie of the Week. — Jane Seville

Thinking of the stars night after night I begin to realize 'The stars are words' and all the innumerable worlds in the Milky Way are words, and so is this world too. And I realize that no matter where I am, whether in a little room full of thought, or in this endless universe of stars and mountains, it's all in my mind. — Jack Kerouac

There, I've said it, and I said it in front of all these strange and quite scary women and that guy, because I'm less frightened of them than I am of being alone with you and you turning me down. — Rowan Coleman

I don't know why you're making the poor girl play with you," Peter said. "You're going to completely slaughter her."
"Well, I am the greatest Guitar Hero player of all time," Jack said. — Amanda Hocking

And Jack, who felt like he was on the cusp of being able to read minds and thought it would be all right if Luce wrote him down for that. ("I sense that you're okay with that, am I right?" He made a gun out of his fingers and clicked his tongue.) — Lauren Kate

Why, sir," said he, looking about him, "what splendour I see: gold lace, breeches, cocked hats. Allow me to recommend a sandwich. And would you be contemplating an attack, at all?" "It had crossed my mind, I must admit," said Jack. "Indeed, I may go so far as to say, that I am afraid a conflict is now virtually inevitable. Did you notice we have cleared for action? — Patrick O'Brian

I am an appearance
The world is an appearance
The bread I eat is an appearance
All wish't forth from Mind Essence
Due to Ignorance
I don't have to exist
I don't exist, I do exist
Who cares?
For the purposes of this world
Do nothing
Or do everything anyhow. — Jack Kerouac

In a flash, at a trumpet crash, I am all at once what Christ is, since he was what I am, and This Jack, joke, poor potsherd, patch, matchwood, immortal diamond, Is immortal diamond. — Wesley Hill

Will Turner: That's not true. I am not obsessed with treasure.

Jack Sparrow: Not all treasure is silver and gold, mate. — Jack Sparrow

F
off. It's not like that. Her and me. I'm just saying
"
"That you hadn't left her for good. I never said you had. You just wanted to withdraw long enough to get used to the idea that you'd lost your chance. Lick your wounds, suck it in, and bounce back to being her friend and mentor, and be happy with just that."
"I am happy with just that. It's all I want."
"Is it? Or is that what you're telling yourself because you think you never had a shot in the first place? You'd better wake up fast, Jack, or she's going to settle for Quinn, and let me tell you, it's settling, because it's not Quinn she
— Kelley Armstrong

All over America highschool and college kids thinking 'Jack Duluoz is 26 years old and on the road all the time hitch hiking' while there I am almost 40 years old, bored and jaded — Jack Kerouac

I am persuaded that your people are foolish beyond any reasonable expectation. Not all of them. Obviously, there are many who are reasonable. Otherwise, you could never have reached this world. But the intelligence seems to be confined to a relatively few individuals. When your people come together as a group, they do not perform well. — Jack McDevitt

I am obsessed with the whole Victoriana thing, the whole Jack the Ripper London era, the grayness of it, the haunted feeling of it, all ancient and bloody. — Florence Welch

Doode," George said.
He'd practiced all morning but still didn't get it quite right. "Nope, more u, less oo. Duuude."
"Dude."
"Dude."
"Okay, dude." George nodded.
"How's it hanging?" Jack asked.
"How am I supposed to answer that?" George looked at him.
"I don't think Kaldar said anything about that. I guess 'good'? I don't get it. What's hanging anyway?"
George shook his head. "Your stuff, you nimwit."
His stuff ... Oh. Ha! "In that case, it's hanging long!" Jack dissolved in giggles. "Long, get it? — Ilona Andrews

After the dark I shall live again, and there will be women. The future holds the little women for me in the lives I am yet to live. And though the stars drift, and the heavens lie, ever remains woman, resplendent, eternal, the one woman, as I, under all my masquerades and misadventures, am the one man, her mate — Jack London

I am in an age group where it is rude to discuss money, and now it is all anyone cares about. — Jack Nicholson

It is life that is the reality and the mystery. Life is vastly different from mere chemic matter fluxing in high modes of motion. Life persists. Life is the thread of fire that persists through all the modes of matter. I know. I am life. I have lived ten thousand generations. I have lived millions of years. I have possessed many bodies. I, the possessor of these many bodies, have persisted. I am life. I am the unquenched spark ever flashing and astonishing the face of time, ever working my will and wreaking my passion on the cloddy aggregates of matter, called bodies, which I have transiently inhabited. — Jack London

Looking up occasionally to see rare cars crossing the high bridge and wondering what they'd see on this drear foggy night if they knew a madman was down there a thousand feet below in all that windy fury sitting in the dark writing in the dark - Some sort of sea beatnik, tho anybody wants to call me a beatnik for THIS better try it if they dare - The huge black rocks seem to move - The bleak awful roaring isolateness, no ordinary man could do it I'm telling you - I am a Breton! I cry and the blackness speaks back "Les poissons de la mer parlent Breton" (the fishes of the sea speak Breton) - Nevertheless I go there every night even tho I dont feel like it, it's my duty (and probably drove me mad), and write these sea sounds, and all the whole insane poem "Sea". — Jack Kerouac

A DESCRIPTION OF HAPPINESS IN KOBENHAVN
All this windless day snow fell
into the King's Garden
where I walked, perfecting and growing old,
abandoning one by one everybody:
randomly in love with the paradise
furnace of my mind. Now I sit in the dark,
dreaming of a marble sun
and its strictness. This
is to tell you I am not coming back.
To tell you instead of my private life
among people who must wrestle their hearts
in order to feel anything, as though it were
unnatural. What I master by day
still lapses in the night. But I go on
with the cargo cult, blindly feeling the snow
come down, learning to flower by tightening. — Jack Gilbert

But you don't hold yourself superior to all the judges of music?" she protested.
"No, no, not for a moment. I merely maintain my right as an individual. I have just been telling you what I think, in order to explain why the elephantine gambols of Madame Tetralani spoil the orchestra for me. The world's judges of music may all be right. But I am I, and I won't subordinate my taste to the unanimous judgment of mankind. If I don't like a thing, I don't like it, that's all; and there is no reason under the sun why I should ape a liking for it just because the majority of my fellow-creatures like it, or make believe they like it. I can't follow the fashions in the things I like or dislike. — Jack London

He turns around, all impatient. Now what? I wanna say something to you. I wanna say ... I dunno ... more. I could bust apart with all I'm feelin inside of me right now. What with fightin off the hellwurms an gittin my shoulder tore open, an how I felt when I woke up an seen you an, now, here I am, being so close to findin Lugh an I dunno what's gonna happen an
Jack's lookin at me, frowning. What's the matter with you, Saba? he says. I grab his face an kiss him on the lips. — Moira Young

I am a sick man - oh, not my body. It is my soul, my brain. I seem to have lost all values. I care for nothing. If you had been this way a few months ago, it would have been different. It is too late, now. — Jack London

Excellent; all is well. The 'everlasting tedium' exactly countervenes the 'immediate onset of death' and I am left only with the 'canker' which, in the person of Firx, already afflicts me. One must use his wits in dealing with maledictions. — Jack Vance

The young look up to me as their feeder," said Alex. "Well, they can go look for another trough. I'm through with this hogwash."
"Are liberal ideas hogwash?"
"All ideas are hogwash, Jack."
"Don't you believe in anything anymore?"
"Sure. I believe in God the Father of Nonsense, creator of Crap and Nonsense, is now and ever shall be Crap without end. Oh, oh, Jack, how we break our hearts trying to make sense of a world that's pure and utter crap. But if you ever come to where I am now, you'll be surprised and delighted to find out how little anything matters."
"You've begun to sound Christian," said Pocholo. — Nick Joaquin

I am an idealist who believes in reality, and who, therefore, in all i write strive to be real, to keep both my own feet and the feet of my readers on the ground so that no matter how high we dream our dreams will be based on reality — Jack London

I like ornament at the right time, but I don't want a poem to be made out of decoration ... When I read the poems that matter to me, it stuns me how much the presence of the heart-in all its forms-is endlessly available there. To experience ourselves in an important way just knocks me out. It puzzles me why people have given that up for cleverness. Some of them are ingenious, more ingenious than I am, but so many of them aren't any good at being alive. — Jack Gilbert

Mary bit her lip. "She is merely saying hello."
Oh, I am, Tottie agreed. I've been wanting to say hello to Mr. Jack for an age, personal-like. Her hand glided over his chest and headed down. Such a fine cocky fella, ye are. Shall we see if it's all just tall tales, then, me lad? — Kristen Callihan

All I need is just a beautiful hand which pulls me up when I am sinking — Nelson Jack