# Quote — Jack Kerouac, On the Road

> I was standing on the hot road underneath an arc-lamp with the summer moths smashing into it when I heard the sound of footsteps from the darkness beyond, and lo, a tall old man with flowing white hair came clomping by with a pack on his back, and when he saw me as he passed, he said, "Go moan for man," and clomped on back to his dark. Did this mean that I should at last go on my pilgrimmage on foot on the dark roads around America?

- Author: [Jack Kerouac](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac.md)
- Book: [On the Road](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/on-the-road.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/On_the_Road#Part_five) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/on-the-road/i-was-standing

## More from this book

> The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled alley so great, that I thought I was in a dream.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/on-the-road/the-air-was.md)

> I want to be like him. He's never hung-up, he goes every direction, he lets it all out, he knows time, he has nothing to do but rock back and forth. Man, he's the end! You see, if you go like him all the time you'll finally get it.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/on-the-road/i-want-to-be-like.md)

> The driver was a fiddler for a California cowboy band. He had a brand-new car and drove eighty miles an hour. ‘I don’t drink when I drive,’ he said and handed me a pint. I took a drink and offered him one. ‘What the hail,’ he said and drank.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/jack-kerouac/on-the-road/the-driver-was.md)