So I rushed past the pretty girls, and the prettiest girls in the world live in Des Moines. — Jack Kerouac

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

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.

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.