On the Road Friendship Quotes

That was the way Dean found me when he finally decided I was worth saving. He took me home to Camille’s house. "Where’s Marylou, man?" (II.11.1)

At dawn I got my New York bus and said good-by to Dean and Marylou. They wanted some of my sandwiches. I told them no. It was a sullen moment. We were all thinking we’d never see one another again and we didn’t care. (II.11.12)

In the spring of 1949 I had a few dollars saved from my GI education checks and I went to Denver, thinking of settling down there. I saw myself in Middle America, a patriarch. I was lonesome. Nobody was there - no Babe Rawlins, Ray Rawlins, Tim Gray, Betty Gray, Roland Major, Dean Moriarty, Carlo Marx, Ed Dunkel, Roy Johnson, Tommy Snark, nobody. (III.1.1)

Before I knew it, once again I was seeing the fabled city of San Francisco stretched on the bay in the middle of the night. I ran immediately to Dean. He had a little house now. I was burning to know what was on his mind and what would happen now, for there was nothing behind me any more, all my I bridges were gone and I didn’t give a damn about anything at all. I knocked on his door at two o’clock in the morning. (III.1.7)

"Eh?" he said. "Eh? Eh?" We racked our brains for where to go and what to do. I realized it was up to me. Poor, poor Dean - the devil himself had never fallen farther; in idiocy, with infected thumb, surrounded by the battered suitcases of his motherless feverish life across America and back numberless times, an undone bird. "Let’s walk to New York," he said, "and as we do so let’s take stock of everything along the way - yass." I took out my money and counted it; I showed it to him. (III.2.18)

"Why yass," said Dean, and then realized I was serious and looked at me out of the corner of his eye for the first time, for I’d never committed myself before with regard to his burdensome existence, and that look was the look of a man weighing his chances at the last moment before the bet. There were triumph and insolence in his eyes, a devilish look, and he never took his eyes off mine for a long time. I looked back at him and blushed.

I said, "What’s the matter?" I felt wretched when I asked it. He made no answer but continued looking at me with the same wary insolent side-eye.

I tried to remember everything he’d done in his life and if there wasn’t something back there to make him suspicious of something now. Resolutely and firmly I repeated what I said - "Come to New York with me; I’ve got the money." I looked at him; my eyes were watering with embarrassment and tears. Still he stared at me. Now his eyes were blank and looking through me. It was probably the pivotal point of our friendship when he realized I had actually spent some hours thinking about him and his troubles, and he was trying to place that in his tremendously involved and tormented mental categories. Something clicked in both of us. In me it was suddenly concern for a man who was years younger than I, five years, and whose fate was wound with mine across the passage of the recent years; in him it was a matter that I can ascertain only from what he did afterward. He became extremely joyful and said everything was settled. "What was that look?" I asked. He was pained to hear me say that. He frowned. It was rarely that Dean frowned. We both felt perplexed and uncertain of something. (III.2.22-III.2.24).

"Dean, why do you act so foolish?" said Galatea. "Camille called and said you left her. Don’t you realize you have a daughter?"

"He didn’t leave her, she kicked him out!" I said, breaking my neutrality. They all gave me dirty looks; Dean grinned. "And with that thumb, what do you expect the poor guy to do?" I added. They all looked at me; particularly Dorothy Johnson lowered a mean gaze on me. It wasn’t anything but a sewing circle, and the center of it was the culprit, Dean - responsible, perhaps, for everything that was wrong. (III.3.10, III.10.11)

This was not true; I knew better and I could have told them all. I didn’t see any sense in trying it. I longed to go and put my arm around Dean and say, Now look here, all of you, remember just one thing: this guy has his troubles too, and another thing, he never complains and he’s given all of you a damned good time just being himself, and if that isn’t enough for you then send him to the firing squad, that’s apparently what you’re itching to do anyway . . . (III.3.17)

"Ah," I said, "you’re always making cracks about my age. I’m no old f** like that f**, you don’t have to warn me about! my kidneys." We went back to the booth and just as the waitress set down the hot-roast-beef sandwiches - and ordinarily Dean would have leaped to wolf the food at once - I said to cap my anger, "And I don’t want to hear any more of it." And suddenly Dean’s eyes grew tearful and he got up and left his food steaming there and walked out of the restaurant. I wondered if he was just wandering off forever. I didn’t care, - I was so mad - I had nipped momentarily and turned it down on Dean. But the sight of his uneaten food made me sadder than anything in years. I shouldn’t have said that ... he likes to eat so much . . . He’s never left his food like this . . . What the hell. That’s showing him, anyway. (III.6.6)

"You don’t die enough to cry." Every one of these things I said was a knife at myself. Everything I had ever secretly held against my brother was coming out: how ugly I was and what filth I was discovering in the depths of my own impure psychologies.

[...]

"Believe me, Sal, really do believe me if you’ve ever believed anything about me." I knew he was telling the truth and yet I didn’t want to bother with the truth and when I looked up at him I think I was cockeyed from cracked intestinal twistings in my awful belly. Then I knew I was wrong. (III.6.13, III.6.16)

"Ah, man, Dean, I’m sorry, I never acted this way before with you. Well, now you know me. You know I don’t have close relationships with anybody any more - I don’t know what to do with these things. I hold things in my hand like pieces of crap and don’t know where to put it down. Let’s forget it." The holy con-man began to eat. "It’s not my fault! it’s not my fault!" I told him. "Nothing in this lousy world is my fault, don’t you see that? I don’t want it to be and it can’t be and it won’t be." (III.6.17)

"Remember that I believe in you. I’m infinitely sorry for the foolish grievance I held against you yesterday afternoon."(III.6.31)

I said, "He won’t do it again. I’ll watch him; he’s my brother and listens to me. Please put your gun away and don’t bother about anything." (III.7.8)

"Well, it’s about time!" said the Broadway Sam travel-bureau boss. "I thought you’d gone off with that Cadillac."

"It’s my responsibility," I said, "don’t worry" - and said that because Dean was in such obvious frenzy everybody could guess his madness. (III.8.9, III.8.10)

"Is he your brother?" the boys asked in the back seat. "He’s a devil with a car, isn’t he? - and according to his story he must be with the women."

"He’s mad," I said, "and yes, he’s my brother." I saw Dean coming back with the farmer in his tractor. (III.8.14, III.8.15)

"What in the hell did you go and do that for?" I could see he used to be Dean’s older brother. He shook his head; the milk pail was still at his feet. "You always been a crackbrained sonofabitch anyhow." (III.8.21)

We were so used to traveling we had to walk all over Long Island, but there was no more land, just the Atlantic Ocean, and we could only go so far. We clasped hands and agreed to be friends forever. (III.11.6)

"Well, lessgo, lessgo!" Dean leaped out of the car and clasped Victor’s hand. There was a group of other boys hanging around the station and grinning, half of them barefoot, all wearing floppy straw hats. "Man," said Dean to me, "ain’t this a nice way to spend an afternoon. It’s so much cooler than Denver poolhalls. Victor, you got gurls? Where? A donde?" he cried in Spanish. "Dig that, Sal, I’m speaking Spanish." (IV.5.21)

Dean didn’t bother with a shower, and we saw him far across the sad park, strolling arm in arm with good Victor and chatting volubly and pleasantly and even leaning excitedly toward him to make a point, and pounding his fist. Then they resumed the arm-in-arm position and strolled. The time was coming to say good-by to Victor, so Dean was taking the opportunity to have moments alone with him and to inspect the park and get his views on things in general and in all dig him as only Dean could do. (IV.5.55)

"All that again, good buddy. Gotta get back to my life. Wish I could stay with you. Pray I can come back." I grabbed the cramps in my belly and groaned. When I looked up again bold noble Dean was standing with his old broken trunk and looking down at me. I didn’t know who he was any more, and he knew this, and sympathized, and pulled the blanket over my shoulders. "Yes, yes, yes, I’ve got to go now.

"Old fever Sal, good-by." And he was gone. Twelve hours later in my sorrowful fever I finally came to understand that he was gone. By that time he was driving back alone through those banana mountains, this time at night.

When I got better I realized what a rat he was, but then I had to understand the impossible complexity of his life, how he had to leave me there, sick, to get on with his wives and woes. "Okay, old Dean, I’ll say nothing." (IV.6.30-IV.6.32)