where did the following line come from? if it doesn’t exist and i made it up, where is one kinda like it?
“compass pointing to nothing save starry passion”
ANSWER PERSON RESPONDS: In a letter to Charles Sampas, dated December 27, 1949, Jack Kerouac stated that Lowell, Massachusetts (his hometown), “like Winesburg Ohio or Asheville North Carolina or Fresno California or Hawthorne’s Salem, is always the place where the darkness of the trees by the river, on a starry night, gives a hint of that inscrutable *future* Americans are always longing and longing for. And when they find that future, not till then they begin looking *back* with sorrows, and an understanding of how man haunts the earth, pacing, prowling, circling in the shades, and the intelligence of the compass pointing to nothing in sight save starry passion … strange, is strange, how we be-dot infinity with our thoughts and poor rooftops, and hometown, then go away forever.” (Charters, Ann, ed. Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters, 1940-1956. New York: Viking, 1995. p. 221.)
Kerouac is commenting to Sampas, a columnist for the Lowell newspaper, about the upcoming publication of his first novel, *The Town and the City*, which is based on his experiences in Lowell.
The ellipsis is in the quote, so I suppose it was in Kerouac’s letter.