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Jack Kerouac Citations
À propos de Neal Cassady et Allen Ginsberg .
), 1957
Jack Kerouac: Citations en anglais
Sometimes credited to Jack Kerouac, from his book The Dharma Bums. It is not a quote by Kerouac. It first appeared as a very brief description of The Dharma Bums in Esquire's list of "The 80 Best Books Every Man Should Read" in 2010: http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/books/g96/80-books/?slide=71. It was later copied by Kilburn Hall in his list of 30 "Books and Authors Every Man Should Read" which he first posted online in 2012: https://kilburnhall.wordpress.com/2012/03/17/the-books-and-authors-every-man-should-read/
Misattributed
“So shut up, live, travel, adventure, bless and don't be sorry”
Variante: Live, travel, adventure, bless, and don't be sorry.
Source: Desolation Angels
“There was nowhere to go but everywhere, so just keep on rolling under the stars.”
Source: On the Road: the Original Scroll
Part One, Ch. 1
On the Road (1957)
Contexte: They danced down the streets like dingledodies, and I shambled after as I've been doing all my life after people who interest me, because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"
“If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.”
Not a Kerouac quote, but by Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (1742-1799), the German scientist, satirist, and Anglophile: http://www.quotes.net/quote/58450
Misattributed
“There was nothing to talk about anymore. The only thing to do was go.”
Source: On the Road
“Be in love with your life. Every minute of it.”
"Belief & Technique For Modern Prose: List of Essentials" in a letter to Arabelle Porter (28 May 1955); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1940-1956 (1995). Sometimes misquoted as "Be in love with your life every minute of it."
Variante: Be in love with your life every detail of it
“Soon I'll find the right words, they'll be very simple.”
Some of the Dharma (1997)
Source: Sometimes paraphrased as "One day I will find the right words, and they will be simple" or "Someday I will find the right words … ", and sometimes misattributed to The Dharma Bums rather than to Some of the Dharma.
“The best teacher is experience and not through someone's distorted point of view.”
Misattributed
Source: Often attributed to Kerouac's On the Road, the quote cannot be found in that book, nor in any of Kerouac's other published works.
“Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.”
This is not a quote by Kerouac. It's a quote by CBS broadcaster Charles Kuralt who used to present a TV news segment called 'On the Road' (which is probably how the confusion arose). This particular statement by Kuralt was made in May 1996 to students of Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, New York: http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1298&dat=19960527&id=yf8yAAAAIBAJ&sjid=yQcGAAAAIBAJ&pg=3106,5606314
Misattributed
Not a Kerouac quote, but by Jon Krakauer, from his nonfiction book Into the Wild (1996).
Misattributed
Source: On the Road
The Town and the City (1950)
Contexte: He saw that all the struggles of life were incessant, laborious, painful, that nothing was done quickly, without labor, that it had to undergo a thousand fondlings, revisings, moldings, addings, removings, graftings, tearings, correctings, smoothings, rebuildings, reconsiderings, nailings, tackings, chippings, hammerings, hoistings, connectings — all the poor fumbling uncertain incompletions of human endeavor. They went on forever and were forever incomplete, far from perfect, refined, or smooth, full of terrible memories of failure and fears of failure, yet, in the way of things, somehow noble, complete, and shining in the end. This he could sense even from the old house they lived in, with its solidly built walls and floors that held together like rock: some man, possibly an angry pessimistic man, had built the house long ago, but the house stood, and his anger and pessimism and irritable labourious sweats were forgotten; the house stood, and other men lived in it and were sheltered well in it.
“I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.”
The Dharma Bums (1958)
“I'm writing this book because we're all going to die”
In the loneliness of my life, my father dead, my brother dead, my mother far away, my sister and my wife far away, nothing here but my own tragic hands that once were guarded by a world, a sweet attention, that now are left to guide and disappear their own way into the common dark of all our death, sleeping in me raw bed, alone and stupid...
Visions of Cody (1960)
“Pain or love or danger makes you real again….”
Source: The Dharma Bums
Source: Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings
Used in the Apple "Think Different" marketing campaign and sometimes attributed to Kerouac on the internet, perhaps because it evokes his famous quote from On 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, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"" The original script was actuality written by Rob Siltanen with participation of Lee Clow. In "The Real Story Behind Apple's 'Think Different' Campaign" in Forbes (14 December 2011) http://www.forbes.com/sites/onmarketing/2011/12/14/the-real-story-behind-apples-think-different-campaign/ Rob Siltanen states: "I wrote everything..." "I shared my scripts with Lee, and he thought they were good. He made a couple tweaks..."
Misattributed
“Listen to the silence inside the illusion of the world”
Letter to Edith Parker Kerouac (28 January 1957); published in Jack Kerouac: Selected Letters 1957-1969 (1999)