This quote from Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel “The Dharma Bums” summarizes the energy of the Beat Generation — a group of artists, authors, and poets who saw with wide eyes the boundless opportunities that were opening up during the cultural revolution of the 1950s and ‘60s. To Kerouac, a blank page represented the exciting infinitude of the new age, and a life lived outside the boundaries of conventional society.