"The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, the ones who are desirous of everything at the same time, who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop, and everybody goes "Awww."
With that beautiful, rambling, labrynthine piece of poetic syntax, the Beat Generation writer Jack Kerouac won my heart and blew my mind, just as he did for millions of others longing for a little something more and a little something different in their art and in their lives. The darling, the godfather, the voice of the Beats and the Hippies and even the punks would have turned 95 today, and sixty years after the publication of On the Road, the world is celebrating the man who turned us all on to a new way of thinking as we went in search of old Dean Moriarty.
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