On The Road

This book is full of memorable quotes, but to me, the last paragraph stands out the most. To think about the weight it carries with regard to the entire novel that precedes it still astounds me, and I can re-read it from time to time without ever growing tired.

So in American when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sprinkler dims on the prarie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty.

I read this book awhile ago over the last winter break, but it has always stuck with me. Although it might not be the densest read, I remember being completely absorbed by the writing (though I think I heard somewhere that it was written in something like 3 weeks on a massive cocaine binge) and narration. If nothing else, its incredible that this story was pretty much based on actual events, and these people did repeatedly hitchhike across the country making a huge adventure out of whatever developed or whatever they felt like doing.