'safe in heaven dead'

Mike Wallace interviews Jack Kerouac for the New York Post, January 21, 1958:


MW: What is the basis of your mysticism?

JK: What I believe is that nothing is happening.

MW: What do you mean?

JK: Well, you're not sitting here. That's what you think. Actually we are all great empty space. I could walk right through you... you know what I mean, we're made out of atoms, electrons. We're actually empty. We're an empty vision... in one mind.

MW: In what mind - the mind of God?

JK: That's the name we give it. We can call it tangerine... god... tangerine... But I do know we are empty phantoms, sitting here thinking we are human beings and worrying about civilization. We're just empty phantoms. And yet, all is well.

MW: All is well?

JK: Yeah. We're all in Heaven, now, really.

MW: You don't sound happy.

JK: Oh, I'm tremendously sad. I'm in great despair.

MW: Why?

JK: It's a great burden to be alive. A heavy burden, a great big heavy burden. I wish I were safe in Heaven, dead.