on the road in Mexico

"'La única gente que me interesa es la que está loca, la gente que está loca por vivir, loca por hablar, loca por salvarse,' it began, and anyone who has read On the Road will easily recognize it as the mission statement of the man who inspired my generation to hit the road: 'The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved.' (The end of the book, seldom quoted, was a soberer reflection:  'Nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody, besides the forlorn rags of growing old,' a condition that Kerouac was never to know, dying in Florida at the age of forty-seven.)"

~~ from On the Plain of Snakes by Paul Theroux