Dharma Bums

"Your mind makes out the orange by seeing it, hearing it, touching it, smelling it, tasting it and thinking about it but without this mind, you call it, the orange would not seen or hear or smelled or tasted or even mentally noticed, it's actually that orange, depednging on your mind to exist!"

This is such a fascinating quote I had to put it in. It it a thought that the only reason things exist as they do is because of our senses, and without these senses nothing would exist. If humans had never been able to hear we would never know that sound exists. This quote exemplifies how much Ray really does know after all of his blabber of small poems and radical thinking.


"I'm going to die!' because there was nothing else to do in the cold loneliness of this harsh inhospitable earth,"

This quote is singly interesting because it comes at this time in the book. He has returned home. Where everyone works and sits infront of the television at night. He has returned to the mainstream culture. He is offered a sleeping place infront of the wood stove. And yet this is where he is the most unhappy he has been in the book. He has this breakdown of momentary depression. This is just another example of how the mainstream culture does anything but bring happiness to many.