“I wanted to put my hand to an enormous paean which would unify my vision of America with words spilled out in the modern spontaneous method. Instead of just a horizontal account of travels on the road, I wanted a vertical, metaphysical study. ... This feeling may soon be obsolete as America enters its High Civilization period and no one will get sentimental or poetic any more about trains and dew on fences at dawn in Missouri.”

“It was my dream that screwed up, the stupid hearthside idea that it would be wonderful to follow one great red line across America instead of trying various roads and routes.”

“I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”

“my karma was to be born in America where nobody has any fun or believes in anything, especially freedom.”

“Holy flowers floating in the air, were all these tired faces in the dawn of Jazz America.”

“I have been writing my heart out all my life, but only getting a living out of it now, and the attacks are coming in thick. A lot of people are mad and jealous and bitter and I only hope they also can be heard by an expanding publishing program the size of Russia's. Because it's not a question of the merit of art, but a question of spontaneity and sincerity and joy I say. I would like everybody in the world to tell his full life confession and tell it HIS OWN WAY and then we'd have something to read in our old age, instead of the hesitations and cavilings of 'men of letters' with blear faces who only alter words that the Angel brought them.”

“Here I was at the end of America...no more land...and nowhere was nowhere to go but back”