Kerouac's California

Not bad for a French-Canadian from New England:

“I was halfway across America, at the dividing line between the East of my youth and the West of my future.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“On soft Spring nights I'll stand in the yard under the stars - Something good will come out of all things yet - And it will be golden and eternal just like that - There's no need to say another word.”
― Jack Kerouac, Big Sur

“All the magic names of the valley unrolled - Manteca, Madera, all the rest. Soon it got dusk, a grapy dusk, a purple dusk over tangerine groves and long melon fields; the sun the color of pressed grapes, slashed with burgundy red, the fields the color of love and Spanish mysteries. I stuck my head out the window and took deep breaths of the fragrant air. It was the most beautiful of all moments.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

“I never saw such crazy musicians. Everybody in Frisco blew. It was the end of the continent; they didn't give a damn.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"Dean's California--wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.”
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"I suddenly realized I was in California. Warm, palmy air - air you can kiss - and palms. ... I wandered out like a haggard ghost, and there she was, Frisco - long, bleak streets with trolley wires all shrouded in fog and whiteness."
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"When we staggered out of the car on O'Farrell Street and sniffed and stretched, it was like getting on shore after a long voyage at sea..."
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

" I thought, and looked everywhere, as I had looked everywhere in the little world below. And before me was the great raw bulge and bulk of my American continent; somewhere far across, gloomy, crazy New York was throwing up its cloud of dust and brown steam. There is something brown and holy about the East; and California is white like washlines and emptyheaded - at least that’s what I thought then."
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

""LA." I loved the way she said "LA"; I love the way everybody says "LA" on the Coast; it’s their one and only golden town when all is said and done.
― Jack Kerouac, On the Road

"This man had voyaged to the West Coast too, like all the other loose American elements."
― Jack Kerouac, Lonesome Traveler

"Well, we bums call it the Midnight Ghost cause you get on it at L.A. and nobody sees you till you get to San Francisco in the morning the thing flies so fast."
"Eighty miles an hour on the straightaways, pap."
"That's right but it gits mighty cold at night when you're flyin up that coast north of Gavioty and up around Surf."
― Jack Kerouac, Dharma Bums