Musicians from the United States

"I can't speak or write German, but I'am overjoyed because I have bought one of your pictures. Now it is in me. I write music. You are my teacher."

"Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. The sound of a truck at fifty miles per hour. Static between the stations. Rain. We want to capture and control these sounds, to use them not as sound effects but as musical instruments. Every film studio has a library of "sound effects" recorded on film. With a film phonograph it is now possible to control the amplitude and frequency of any one of these sounds and to give to it rhythms within or beyond the reach of the imagination. Given four film phonographs, we can compose and perform a quartet for explosive motor, wind, heartbeat, and landslide."

"I believe that the use of noise to make music will continue and increase until we reach a music produced through the use of electrical instruments which will make available for musical purposes any and all sounds that can be heard. Photoelectric, film and mechanical mediums for the synthetic production of music will be explored."

"...WHEREAS, IN THE PAST, THE POINT OF DISAGREEMENT HAS BEEN BETWEEN DISSONANCE AND CONSONANCE, IT WILL BE, IN THE IMMEDIATE FUTURE, BETWEEN NOISE AND SO-CALLED MUSICAL SOUNDS."

"The composer (organizer of sound) will be faced not only with the entire field of sound but also with the entire field of time. The 'frame' or fraction of a second, following established film technique, will probably be the basic unit in the measurement of time. No rhythm will be beyond the composer's reach."

"I have nothing to say/ and I am saying it/ and that is poetry/ as I need it."

"We need not destroy the past. It is gone."

"I remember loving sound before I ever took a music lesson. And so we make our lives by what we love."

"A finished work is exactly that, requires resurrection."

"I imagine that as contemporary music goes on changing in the way that I'm changing it what will be done is to more and more completely liberate sounds from abstract ideas about them and more and more exactly to let them be physically uniquely themselves. This means for me: knowing more and more not what I think a sound is but what it actually is in all of its acoustical details and then letting this sound exist, itself, changing in a changing sonorous environment."

"A sound does not view itself as thought, as ought, as needing another sound for its elucidation, as etc.; it has not time for any consideration--it is occupied with the performance of its characteristics: before it has died away it must have made perfectly exact its frequency, its loudness, its length, its overtone structure, the precise morphology of these and of itself."

"Until I die there will be sounds. And they will continue following my death. One need not fear about the future of music."

"Which is more musical, a truck passing by a factory or a truck passing by a music school? Are the people inside the school musical and the ones outside unmusical?"

"David Tudor and I went to Hilversum in Holland to make a recording for the Dutch radio. We arrived at the studio early and there was some delay. To pass the time, we chatted with the engineer who was to work with us. He asked me what kind of music he was about to record. Since he was a Dutchman I said, 'It may remind you of the work of Mondrian.' When the session was finished and the three of us were leaving the studio, I asked the engineer what he thought of the music we had played. He said, 'It reminded me of the work of Mondrian.'"

"So it was that I gave about 1949 my 'Lecture on Nothing' at the Artists' Club on Eighth Street in New York City (started by Robert Motherwell), which predated the popular one associated with Philip Pavia, Bill de Kooning, et al. ). This 'Lecture on Nothing' was written in the same rhythmic structure I employed at the time in my musical compositions (Sonatas and Interludes, Three Dances, etc.) . One of the structural divisions was the repetition, some fourteen times, of a single page in which occurred the refrain, 'If anyone is sleepy let him go to sleep.' Jeanne Reynal, I remember, stood up part way through, screamed, and then said, while I continued speaking, 'John, I dearly love you, but I can't bear another minute.' She then walked out. Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen."

"At Black Mountain College in 1952, I organized an event that involved the paintings of Bob Rauschenberg, the dancing of Merce Cunningham, films, slides, phonograph records, radios, the poetries of w:Charles Olson and M. C. Richards recited from the tops of ladders, and the pianism of David Tudor, together with my 'Juilliard lecture', which ends: 'A piece of string, a sunset, each acts.' The audience was seated in the center of all this activity. Later that summer, vacationing in New England, I visited America's first synagogue, to discover that the congregation was there seated precisely the way I had arranged the audience at Black Mountain."

"Critics frequently cry 'Dada' after attending one of my concerts or hearing one of my lectures. Others bemoan my interest in w:Zen. One of the liveliest lectures I ever heard was given by Nancy Wilson Ross at the Cornish School in Seattle. It was called Zen Buddhism and Dada. It is possible to make a connection between the two, but neither Dada nor Zen is a fixed tangible. They change; and in quite different ways in different places and times, they invigorate action. What was Dada in the 1920's is now, with the exception of the work of Marcel Duchamp, just art. What I do, I do not wish blamed on Zen, though without my engagement with Zen.. .I doubt whether I would have done what I have done. . .I often point out that Dada nowadays has in it a space, an emptiness, that it formerly lacked. What nowadays, America mid-twentieth century, is Zen?"

"I certainly had no feeling for harmony, and Schoenberg thought that that would make it impossible for me to write music. He said, 'You'll come to a wall you won't be able to get through.' I said, 'Well then, I'll beat my head against that wall.' I quite literally began hitting things, and developed a music of percussion that involved noises."

"There is one term of the problem which you are not taking into account: precisely, the world. The real. You say: the real, the world as it is. But it is not, it becomes! It moves, it changes! It doesn’t wait for us to change.. .It is more mobile than you can imagine. You are getting closer to this reality when you say as it 'presents itself'; that means that it is not there, existing as an object. The world, the real is not an object. It is a process."

"Art's purpose is to sober and quiet the mind so that it is in accord with what happens."

"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."

"Value judgments are destructive to our proper business, which is curiosity and awareness."

"As far as consistency of thought goes, I prefer inconsistency."

"When I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking. And talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships. But when I hear traffic, the sound of traffic — here on Sixth Avenue, for instance — I don't have the feeling that anyone is talking. I have the feeling that sound is acting. And I love the activity of sound.. .I don't need sound to talk to me."

"They say, 'you mean it's just sounds?' thinking that for something to just be a sound is to be useless, whereas I love sounds just as they are, and I have no need for them to be anything more than what they are. I don't want them to be psychological. I don't want a sound to pretend that it's a bucket or that it's president or that it's in love with another sound. I just want it to be a sound."

"What I'm proposing, to myself and other people, is what I often call the tourist attitude - that you act as though you've never been there before. So that you're not supposed to know anything about it. If you really get down to brass tacks, we have never been anywhere before."

"I once asked Aragon, the historian, how history was written. He said, 'You have to invent it.' When I wish as now to tell of critical incidents, persons, and events that have influenced my life and work, the true answer is all of the incidents were critical, all of the people influenced me, everything that happened and that is still happening influences me."

"We are living in a period in which many people have changed their mind about what the use of music is or could be for them. Something that doesn't speak or talk like a human being, that doesn't know its definition in the dictionary or its theory in the schools, that expresses itself simply by the fact of its vibrations. People paying attention to vibratory activity, not in reaction to a fixed ideal performance, but each time attentively to how it happens to be this time, not necessarily two times the same. A music that transports the listener to the moment where he is."

"John Cage ...once told me, ‘When you start working everybody is in your studio – the past, your friends, enemies, the art world, and above all, your own ideas – all are there. But as you continue painting, they start leaving, one by one, and you are left completely alone. Then, if you are lucky, even you leave."

"I'm especially interested in the music of John Cage.. ..I would like to do some experimenting with the relationship between his freeform sound and [my] free-form art."

"The rise of music that is totally without social commitment also increases the separation between composer and public, and represents still another form of departure from tradition. The cynicism with which this particular departure seems to have been made is perfectly symbolized in John Cage's account of a public lecture he had given: "Later, during the question period, I gave one of six previously prepared answers regardless of the question asked. This was a reflection of my engagement in Zen." While Mr. Cage's famous silent piece [i.e. 4′33″], or his Landscapes for a dozen radio receivers may be of little interest as music, they are of enormous importance historically as representing the complete abdication of the artist's power."

"Object in/ and space – the first impulse may be to give the object – a position – to place the object. (The object had a position to begin with.) Next – to change the position of the object. – Rauschenberg's early sculptures – A board with some rocks on it. The rocks can be anywhere on the board. - Cage's Japanese rock garden – The rocks can be anywhere [within the garden].."

"Once, I made a kind of sculpture of a flag in bronze: it was an edition of three, I think. One of them was given on some occasion to President Kennedy. I became very upset that this was happening. It was given on Flag Day! (he laughs). It seemed to me to be such a terrible thing to happen. I complained bitterly to my very good friend John Cage. He said: "Don't let it worry you. Just consider it as a pun on your work". (he laughs)."

"I met Cummingham around 1953 after a performance I saw. He was teaching and making dances for his company and was already working with John Cage. What interested me initially wasn't just the movement but also the music he worked with, which was unfamiliar to me.. .Later Bob Rauschenberg had been doing sets and costumes for the Cunningham Company.. .I can't say exactly how, but for a period of time, Cage, Cunningham, Rauschenberg, and I saw each other frequently and exchanged ideas. John [Cage] was very interested in presenting his ideas to other people, so it was impossible to be around and not to learn.. .He could apply his ideas on space and time to painting, or music or architecture.. ..I don't have a clear sense of cause and effect in my painting, but it is probably there."

"Cage's Music of Changes was a further indication that the arts in general were beginning to consciously deal with the 'given' material and, to varying degrees, liberating them from the inherited, functional concepts of control."

"John Cage and I became interested in the use of chance in the 50's. I think one of the very primary things that happened then was the publication of the I Ching, the Chinese book of changes, from which you can cast your fortune: the hexagrams."

"Cage took it to work in his way of making compositions then; and he used the idea of 64 — the number of the hexagrams — to say that you had 64, for example, sounds; then you could cast, by chance, to find which sound first appeared, cast again, to say which sound came second, cast again, so that it's done by, in that sense, chance operations. Instead of finding out what you think should follow — say a particular sound — what did the I Ching suggest? Well, I took this also for dance."

"I'm just back from Halberstadt (a 20+ hour journey), having attended the ceremonious 13th note change in the hyperdurational sounding of John Cage's Organ2/ASLSP. This is the last note change to occur for seven long years, so it was particularly well attended. The image above is my vantage point -- being among the last to enter the church, I was really only able to watch the proceedings via the many cell phones held above the heads of hundreds of compatriots. (The presence of so much technology in so hallowed a space is, well, jarring.)"

"The Brick House was one of the toughest joints I ever played in ... Guys would drink and fight one another like circle saws. Bottles would come flying over the bandstand like crazy and there was lots of plain common shooting and cutting. But somehow all that jive didn't faze me at all. I was so happy to have some place to blow my horn."

"Some of you young folks been saying to me, "Hey Pops, what you mean 'What a wonderful world'? How about all them wars all over the place? You call them wonderful? And how about hunger and pollution? That aint so wonderful either." Well how about listening to old Pops for a minute. Seems to me, it ain't the world that's so bad but what we're doin' to it. And all I'm saying is, see, what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love baby, love. That's the secret, yeah. If lots more of us loved each other, we'd solve lots more problems. And then this world would be a gasser. That's wha' ol' Pops keeps saying."

"The way they're treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell."

"Making money ain't nothing exciting to me. ... You might be able to buy a little better booze than some wino on the corner. But you get sick just like the next cat, and when you die you're just as graveyard dead as he is."

"If you still have to ask, shame on you"

"True revolution in music took place, as far as I can see it, took place only a few times, three times in this century. One was the revolution that took place aided and abetted if not instigated by Louis Armstrong. Louis Armstrong did something with the trumpet that had never been done. Things that have become so casual, so common to our ears now, Louis Armstrong introduced."

"When Louis Armstrong, according to a few of his biographies, came to Chicago he was wearing a suit, the pants of which were about three inches too short, his white socks showed, he had these brogans on and he wore a derby hat. He got up on the stage and all the musicians laughed until he started to play. When he finished playing, the next day all the musicians went out and bought some pants three inches too short, some white socks and some brogan shoes and a derby hat, you understand. Louis Armstrong was on J-and never got off his J-never, never stopped. I mean for all intents and purposes, died with his trumpet in his hand. So did Duke Ellington, all those people who inspire one, who inspire me. Duke was still going on the road right up till the last. Louis Armstrong still on the road till the very last. I appreciate that, I respect it and I am grateful for it. I am grateful, in the name of my grandson I am grateful."

"When you're sick [due to drug withdrawal], music is a great help. Once in Texas, I kicked a [heroin] habit on weed, a pint of paregoric, and a few Louis Armstrong records."

"I once had a drink with Billie Holiday, and I smoked a joint with Louis Armstrong. Those are my real claims to fame."

"Louis ... was marvelous to be with. He had tremendous warmth, appeal. And I idolized him, not only for how great he was singing and playing, but for himself. ... I used to get postcards from him [from] all over the world. ... He went to every accessible place in the world."

"He was the only musician who ever lived, who can't be replaced by someone."

"I like Louis! Anything he does is all right. I don't know about his statements, though. I can do without them."

"You know you can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played — I mean even modern. … I love his approach to the trumpet; he never sounds bad. He plays on the beat and you can't miss when you play on the beat — with feeling. That's another phrase for swing."

"I loved and respected Louis Armstrong. He was born poor, died rich, and never hurt anyone along the way."

"Louis Armstrong is a jazz ancestor, a kind of great-grandfather, or even an Adam of jazz, with Billie Holiday nearby as a stunning and gifted Eve. What fed all of them was the music of the Mississippi River, an entity that continues to carry life and stories from the north to the south, emptying into the Gulf of Mexico with arms to encircle the Caribbean."

"I knew Louis well, he had his crazy little habits. Everyone thinks he was a druggie, but he wasn't. After every concert, he would put on a stocking cap, then he'd have his bottle of Pluto water, orange juice, Serutan and a joint. This was his formula; in fact, he used to post the recipe on bulletin boards, calling it "The Road to Good Health.""

"My most revered idols as a kid growing up were Louis Armstrong and... Duke Ellington. When I got into the record business... the first recordings I made with him were for 's Roulette label. Louis... made my dream come truer: he brought in his little band—five pieces—and agreed to use a friend of mine on piano, Duke Ellington!"

"[I]n the mid-60s during the deepening national traumas of the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam, racial strife, and turmoil everywhere, my co-writer and I had an idea to write a "different" song specifically for Louis Armstrong... "". We wanted this immortal musician and performer to say, as only he could, the world really is great... At the time Louis's "Hello Dolly" was the biggest hit record in the country and... Armstrong was a bigger star than at any previous moment in his career. As he was constantly on tour... I went to Joe Glazer, ...Louis's manager ...With Glazer's permission and a small children's portable phonograph... I went down to Washington D.C. ...Between shows I auditioned our number ...Armstrong said, "Pops, I dig it. Let's do it! (Of course, we called him "Pops," and he called everybody "Pops.") ...Louis agreed to record it for minimum union scale (...$250 at the time)..."

"The then president of ... ... ...showed up at the recording session ...screamed at me that I had to be crazy to record a ballad with strings as the follow-up to "Hello Dolly" ...Finally he wanted to cancel the date and fire the musicians and me. ...[A]ll I could do to convince Newton to momentarily leave the control room... was to tell him he would go down in history as the only man who ever threw Louis Armstrong out of a recording studio. ...[A]lmost immediately ...Newton tried to storm back into the studio. ...Frank Military ...became a human barricade ...The ensuing door-pounding ...caused Frank ...to actually begin crying and plead, "You can't do this to Louis and Bob." Miraculously ...the recording of one of the most optimistic songs ever written was completed. ...[T]he record ...in the United States ...personally sabotaged by ...Newton, was a disaster. ...In England however, it became #1 ...[and] outsold both the Rolling Stones and the Beatles. It also started to become a hit in many ...European countries and ...South Africa. The EMI Corporation ...sent a telegram to ...Newton ...MUST HAVE WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD ALBUM, which meant... eight more songs in the same style... Joe Glazer advised me to forget it unless Newton paid Louis Armstrong a then undreamed-of $25,000, advance... When the pressure ...finally caused Newton to relent... Louis Armstrong completed one of the best-selling albums of his lifetime and again, posthumously, when the original single became the centerpiece of... Good Morning Vietnam..."

"In jazz, all roads lead back to Louis Armstrong. He is the supreme example of the vitality of the past animating and challenging the present. Trumpeter Art Farmer acknowledged him as ‘still the mark people go after when it comes to sheer emotion speaking through music’, and the contemporary British star Guy Barker declared that any jazz lacking the Armstrong spirit was ‘going to be missing a lot’. [...] Besides his startling playing, Armstrong’s unique scat vocals brought a new dimension to improvisation: a piece like ‘Heebie Jeebies’ seems an outpouring of pure joy, a song that doesn’t need words to convey its rhythmic and melodic gusto. And on the magnificent ‘West End Blues’. his trumpet and vocal powers combine to produce a masterpiece of searing emotion."

"Accept no substitutes; I bring truth to the youth."

"Tired of being trapped in this vicious cycle If one more cop harasses me I just might go psycho And when I get ‘em, I’ll hit ’em with the bum rush Only a lunatic would like to see his skull crushed Yo, if you’re smart you’ll really let me go, G But keep me cooped up in this ghetto and catch the Uzi They got me trapped."

"A few weeks after the song’s release, what was a fictionalized story became very real. On October 17, Tupac was crossing the street in downtown Oakland, California, when police officers Alexander Boyovich and Kevin Rodgers stopped him. They accused him of jaywalking and asked to see his ID. In the police report, they referred to Tupac by his middle name, Amaru, and called him angry and hostile. They said Tupac told them, “This is just two white cops who want to stop a n-----.” A month later at a press conference, Tupac told his side of the story. As he was preparing to enter Union Bank, the officers approached him. Tupac asked why they were requesting to see his ID. He accused them of having a slave-master mentality before allegedly being thrown onto the concrete, cuffed, and choked until he was left unconscious. He was put in jail for seven hours for resisting arrest and later released."

"In July 1993, a jury convicted Howard of capital murder and sentenced him to death. The next day, Linda Sue Davidson moved forward with a lawsuit against 2Pac, Time Warner, and Interscope Records. She didn’t believe that 2Pacalypse Now merited First Amendment protection, alleging that the music was obscene, contained what she called “fighting words,” defamed officers like her husband, and incited imminent illegal conduct in individuals like Howard. More specifically, 2Pac’s music ultimately led to her husband’s demise. “Our goal is to punish Time Warner and wake up the executives who run the music business,” said Jim Cole, the attorney representing Linda Sue Davidson. “This suit isn’t just about some storyteller spouting militant rhetoric here. 2Pac is dangerously serious. This suit is about stopping giant corporations from shamelessly making money off music designed to incite impressionable young men to shoot and kill cops like Bill.”"

"On March 28, 1997, Judge John D. Rainey, who presided over the libel suit Linda Sue Davidson brought against 2Pac, concluded: “2Pacalypse Now is both disgusting and offensive. That the album has sold hundreds of thousands of copies is an indication of society’s aesthetic and moral decay. However, the First Amendment became part of the Constitution because the Crown sought to suppress the Framers’ own rebellious, sometimes violent views. Thus, although the Court cannot recommend 2Pacalypse Now to anyone, it will not strip Shakur’s free speech rights based on the evidence presented by the Davidsons.”"

"Vice President Dan Quayle, broadening his attack on Hollywood, Tuesday blasted the recording industry for producing rap music that he said had led to violence. Quayle called on the Time Warner Inc. subsidiary, Interscope Records, to withdraw the album “2pacalypse Now” by rap artist Tupac Amaru Shakur from stores. Quayle charged that the record was responsible for the death of a Texas state trooper, who was shot to death in April by a suspect who allegedly was listening to the album on the tape deck of a stolen truck when he was stopped by the officer."

"The trooper’s family has filed a civil suit against Shakur and Interscope, claiming the record’s violence-laden lyrics incite “imminent lawless action.” One of the album’s songs, “Soulja’s Story,” speaks of “blasting” a police officer and “droppin’ the cop” after a traffic stop. Quayle likened the album to rapper Ice-T’s notorious “Cop Killer,” which Time Warner Inc. pulled off the market this summer. “Once again we’re faced with an irresponsible corporate act,” Quayle said in Houston after he spoke with the late trooper’s daughter, Kimberly Davidson. “There is absolutely no reason for a record like this to be published by a responsible corporation.”"

"In all my years of defending inner-city clients I have never introduced music before as a mitigating circumstance in a murder case. But I do believe it applies in this case. Without the music riling him up, I do not think that this incident would have occurred."

"First, I wanna say 'peace' to my mother. She's not here but I gotta give a 'peace out' to her because I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my mother."

"It's not going to stop until "we" stop it. And it's not just white man that's doing this to Brenda. It's not just white man that's keeping us trapped. It's "black." And we have to find the new African in everybody... But before we can be African, we gotta be black first."

"What I want you to take seriously is what we have to do for the youth."

"You grew up, we grew up B.C. Before crack. That's just saying it all. You understand? You don't have parents... You have young kids, fourteen, coming home and their mama is smoking out, going to their best friend to get the product."

"It's not just about you taking care of "your" child. It's about you taking care of these children."

"First, I want to say peace to my mother. She's not here, but I've got to give a 'peace out' to her, because I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for my mother. And, I look in the front of this thing and it says 'start from within to rebuild our original greatness.' Right? Okay, well that's what my mother did. You know what I'm saying? And I'm listen about freedom fighters and strugglers. Well you got to understand when it was 'in' to have a gun and be in the streets, my mother gave that up to be in a house and wash the dishes and feed us. You know what I'm saying? And put the thoughts in our brain. We didn't get any of that history from all of those soldiers that we lost. We got none of that. They all went to jail if you can remember that. They all went to penitentiaries. We didn't see none of that knowledge. If it was not for my mother, that stayed home, and didn't go out and do all that, then I wouldn't have shit, excuse my language. But, I wouldn't have been nowhere. So what I want to do hopefully is. I want to be, not I want to be, I am Tupac Shakur. I have to be a reminder that we cant chill out. No, it not time cool out in banquets, its still on. It's on just like it was on when you were young and you want to say 'fuck that'. Just like you said 'fuck that', back then. So how come, now that I'm twenty years old and ready to start some shit, everybody's telling me to 'calm down'. Don't curs them, go to school, go to college. Well, fuck that. We have had colleges for awhile now. You know what I'm sayin? There's still Brenda's out there and niggas are still trapped. You know what I'm saying? And it gets me, irked. You know what I'm saying? Because I understand that it's not going to stop. You know what I'm saying?"

"It's not going to stop until we stop it. And it's not just white men that's doing this to Brenda. It's not just white men that's keeping us trapped. It's 'black', and we have to find the new African in everybody. In all of us, because if we keep running around looking for black and who got the most colors on or who got the baddest dashiki, we're still going to, excuse my language, we're still going to get fucked. Because it hurts me that my mother right now is going though, you know, she has to get clean. This is somebody I watched travel the whole country. You know what I'm saying? During the time when our women were scared to speak up. But, a Black Panther she spoke at Harvard, Yale, everywhere and now. I see my mother as what's really going on. You know what I'm saying? I don't see no big parade around my mother now. She's got a dozen fucking awards, and I don't see nobody there. You understand what I'm saying? So out of this, I take that lightly. I take all this lightly."

"What I want you to take seriously, is what we have to do for the youth. Because we're coming up in a totally different world. This is not the same world that you had this is not 6th Street its not. You grew up, we grew up B.C. Before crack. That's just saying it all. You understand? We did not grow up without parents. You had parents that told you this and that and told you what went on back in the day. You have young kids, fourteen, coming home and their mama is smoking out, going to their best friend to get the product. You understand what I'm saying? So that means it's not just about you taking care of "your" child. It's about you taking care of "these children". It hurts that I got to, it bothers me, not hurts, that I have to sidestep my youth to stand up and do some shit that somebody else is suppose to be doing. You understand what I'm saying? There's too many men out here for me to be doing this, because it ain't my turn yet. I'm supposed to be following behind him getting the knowledge. I don't even got a chance to get the fucking knowledge. I can't go to college. There's too much problems out here. I don't got the money. Nobody does. You understand what I'm saying? So what I'm saying is, it's not as easy as we're mapping it out to be. We've got to stay real. Before we can be new African we've gotta be black first. You understand? We've gotta get our brothers from the streets like Harriett Tubman did. Why can't we look at that and see exactly what she was doing? Like Malcolm did, the real Malcolm, before the Nation of Islam. You've got to remember, this was a pimp. You know what I'm saying, we forgot about all that. In our strive to be enlightened we forgot about all our brothers in the street, about all our dope dealers, our pushers and our pimps, and that's who's teaching the new generation, because y'all not doing it. I'm sorry. But, it's the pimps and pushers who's teaching us. So, if you got a problem with how we were raised, its because they was the only ones who could do it. They the only ones who did it, because everybody else wanted to go to college, and you know, yeah everything's changed, they were the ones telling you 'the white man ain't shit, there you go, check this out young blood, you take this product, you switch it, you get money and that's how you beat the white man, you get money, you get the hell up out of here.' Nobody else did that. So I don't wanna hear shit about nobody telling me who I can't love and respect until you start doing what they did. To me, this is Mecca. This is the black family. You know what I'm saying? But, what makes it that much sadder, what makes me wanna cry, is that when I leave this place, so does Mecca. You understand what I'm saying? We're going back to the real deal. Right out there, you're going see the same sisters and Brenda, they're right out there, and y'all are going to get in your cars and drive the fuck home."

"They got money for wars, but can't feed the poor."

"To dance with the naked [blow-up] doll, that was me! That's what I mean by I'm real, I'm truly hardcore, because I needed the money and I had to work. So if he told me that for me to get paid I had to go out there in bikini briefs and hop on top of this [blow-up] doll and that's how I gotta get paid, and I was homeless at the time, that's what I had to do. But What I did was not let him pimp me, you know what I'm saying. It wasn't like I just did that because that was my order. As soon as I got the check's to say what was on my mind, I said what was on my mind. And we have a platinum record now, you know what I'm saying."

"You have to work from one point to go to another. So I admire work ethic, I think it should be re-inforced through out our neigbourhoods, that everybody should work hard, practice makes perfect, you have to be diligent with what you want, you have to apply your self, you have to motivate your self. You have to do for-self by your self, and then you can do things for other people. But that's what I had to do, I had to do for-self."

"I want, when they see me, They know that everyday when I'm breathing is for us to go further. Everytime I speak I want the truth to come out. Not one person even realizes that I have white relatives, my cousin just had a son who is “White” but everytime I speak I want a shiver so yes, I do omit things that I feel are not accurately portraying my “character”. I don't want them to be like; they know what I'm gonna say, because it's polite. Im not saying I'm gonna rule the world or I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee you that I will spark the brain that will change the world. And that's our job, It's to spark somebody else watching us. We might not be the one's, but let's not be selfish and because we not gonna change the world let's not talk about how we should change it. I don't know how to change it, but I know if I keep talking about how dirty it is out here, somebody's gonna clean it up."

"I gotta big mouth, I can't help it, I talk from my heart, I'm real you know what I'm sayin whatever comes comes. But my controverse problems, It's not my fault, I try to find my way in the world you know, I try to be somebody instead of just, make money off of everybody. You know what im saying, so I go down paths that haven't been traveled before and I usually mess up, but I learn, you know what I'm saying, I come back stronger, I'm not talking ignorant, you know what I'm saying. So obviously put thought into what I do. So I think my mouth, my controverse, I have not been out of the paper since I joined Digital Underground, I've been in all, you know what I'm saying, my name has not been not uttered, you know what I'm saying, and that's good for me because I don't wanna be forgotten. If I'm forgotten then that means I'm comfortable and that means I think everything is okay."

"It's like a battle, trying to find the right words to say at the right time."

"It's a constant man-ego-check going on in the streets, in this world."

"I believe honestly that I can talk. I believe that I have the ability to reason, I have logic, I have compassion, I have understanding. If we talk there's no problem you know what I'm saying. But that's not what happened. People used what they heard in media and that's how they come at me, and then you know we got a clash."

"If your not cheering for me, for what I'm doing, don't cheer for me. Don't cheer cause you think I'm cute, you know what I'm saying, screw that. Cheer for me for what I'm doing, for what I stand for, and when I go to jail you should cheer louder."

"I have no patience for anybody that doubts me, none at all."

"I'm not thuggin' for me, I'm thuggin' for my family, I pay all the bills, I feed my whole family, wrong or right, I do and I can't stop."

"The main thing for us to remember is that, the same crime element that white people are scared of, black people are scared of. The same crime element that white people fear, black people fear. So we defend our self from the same crime element that they are scared of, you know what I'm saying, while they are waiting for legislations to pass and everything, we're next door to the killer, we're next door to him you know. Because we up in the projects where it's 80 niggas in the building. All them killers that they letting out, they're right there in that building. Just because we're black we get along with the killers or something? We get along with rapist's because we're black and from the same hood? What is that? We need protection too."

"I made a metamorphose, I'm a new person today, because I used to strongly and honestly, honestly! I feel like I can represent my generation so much because I honestly did not care whether I lived or died. But now I can not die, with people thinking I'm a rapist or a criminal, I can not leave until this shit is straight, you know I'm not suicidal. I can't go until ya'll really know what time it is. And then after that, BOOM!, It's all over and we can see how this shit fall, but that's how it is, and the reason being is because if I can't live free, if I can't live with the same respect as the next man, I don't wanna be here, because god has cursed me to see what life should be like, If God wanted me to be this person and be happy here, he wouldn't let me feel so oppressed, he wouldn't let me feel so trampled on, you know what I'm saying, he wouldn't let me think the things I think. So I feel I'm doing Gods work, you know what I'm saying just because I don't have nothing to pass around for people to put money in a bucket don't mean I ain't doing God's work."

"The only way I've been practicing my whole life, to live my life is to be responsible for what I do. I don't know how to be responsible for what every black male did, I don't know. And yes, I am gonna say that I'm a thug, that's because I came from the gutter and I'm still here! I'm not saying I'm a thug because I wanna rob you or rape people and things. I'm a business man, I mean, you know I'm a business man because you find me at my places of business."

"It's not my liking for guns, what about the NRA? We all have the rights to bear arms, I have that, I have that same right as you do. Just because I'm black doesn't mean I shouldn't have a gun; I legally own guns."

"I know how it's gonna be when I die. It's going to be no noise, you ain't going to hear people screaming. I'mma fade out."

"Marlon Brando is not a gangster-actor, he's an actor. Axl Rose and them are not gangster rock-and-rollers, they're rock-and-rollers right. So I'm a rapper, this is what I do. I'm an artist."

"I think being humble is sexy."

"I think that I'm really, I was a reactionary, and now I don't do that any more. Same person, but I don't react. Before, I reacted. I didn't like the cameras, so I spit."

"I'm known as a survivor now, I hope so, for the jail thing, bullets and everything, controversies and everything, I hope so. And I want to be in the future known as somebody. You know I want people to be talking about me like you know: "remember when he was real bad, remember when Tupac was real bad". You know what I mean, they do that about a lot of actors now, like John Travolta I read stories like "remember you were wild". And all these other people, and now they're like sweet hearts. We all should get that chance, I just want my chance."

"Jail is big business, believe me. I'm in jail, I see the big business. You can feed a whole town off one jail. This jail is in the middle of a town that feeds everybody. Everybody works here, this is the main income. So if there were no criminals, nobody would work."

"The guns are turning away from Europe and Russia and Iran and Iraq and they're turning to us."

"America is the biggest gang in the world."

"Prison kills your spirit, straight up. It kills your spirit. There is no creativity, there's none of that."

"Now if we do wanna live the thug life and the gangsta' life and all that, OK, so stop being cowards and let's have a revolution. But we don't wanna do that, dudes just wanna live "character", they wanna be "cartoons", but if they really wanted to do something, they was that tuff, alright, let's start our own country, let's start a revolution, let's get outta' here, let's do something. But they don't wanna do that, they wanna pimp our communities and portray this image that they know we all can't survive and make, and that's what I saw."

"No matter what these people say about me, my music does not glorify any image, my music is spiritual if you listen to it. It's all about emotion, it's all about life."

"Watch people, because you can fake for a long time, but one day you're gonna show yourself to be a phony."

"Measure a man by his actions fully, from the beginning to the end. Don't take a piece out of my life or a song out of my music and say this is what I'm about, because you know better than that."

"I don't feel like what I did was so evil, I just feel like the way I was living and my mentality was a part of my progression to be a man."

"Don't support the phonies, support the real."

"Listen to the words people say in their lyrics, and tell me, if that's some real shit, if that's real to you, you know what I mean. Listen to what they sayin', don't just bob your head to the beat, peep the game, and listen to what Im saying. Hold us accountable for it."

"Trust nobody, TRUST NO BODY."

"Fear is stronger than love, remember that. Fear is stronger than love, all that love I gave didn't mean nothing when it came to fear."

"The only thing that can kill me is death, that's the only thing that can ever stop me, is death, and even then my music will live forever."

"I've always been an actor, the reason I've been successful in the rap-game I think is that I treat my albums like movies, and I treat writing it like I'm a character writing a story, you know, for each album whatever I'm going through, whatever stages I'm going through, and I do it vividly with vivid pitcure, with action and description, and an beginning and with an end, and conflict, and you know, redemption, things like that. So I feel like I always been an actor and acting is my first love."

"If you thought about it I'm hardly the villain, I'm hardly the one you should be scared of. It's the guy who can't talk, it's the guy without a job, it's the one with scares in his face, not the one clean cut, you know what I mean you should worry about a lot of other things, but not me."

"All good niggas, all the niggas who change the world, die in violence. They don't die in regular ways."

"Basically It's a hypocritical view, because what your saying is it's okay for us to live in the dirt, in the gutter, in less than human conditions, but it's not okay for us to tell people that we are living in these conditions."

"Everybody's at war with different things... I'm at war with my own heart sometimes."

"On the whole, I don't have any friends. Friends come and go; I've lost my trust factor. I believe I have people who think they're my friend. And I believe that there are people probably in their heart who are friends toward me or are friends to me. But they're not my friends, because what I learned is that fear is stronger than love."

"It's not like I idolize this one guy Machiavelli. I idolize that type of thinking where you do whatever's gonna make you achieve your goal."

"This new Makaveli album I got comin' out, I'm takin' on niggas. It's like, my dopest album ever."

"I am the future of black America."

"Fuck it, I feel like I shine."

"I can't explain why I shine and no one else shines. I think everybody shines in different things."

"The reason I sell 6 million records, the reason I could go to jail and come out without a scratch, the reason I can walk around, the reason I am who I am today is because I can look directly in to my face and find my soul, it's there, it's not sold, i didn't sell it, it's still within me, I still feel it, my heart is still connected to my body."

"My adversaries crumble when we rumble; it's a catastrophe."

"It seems, my main thing was to be major paid The game sharper than a motherfucking razor blade Say money bring bitches, bitches bring lies."

"You claim to be a player, but I fucked your wife."

"Killing ain't fair, but somebody's got to do it."

"More money means litigating, more player-hating. Got a cell at the pen, for me waiting. Is this my fate?"

"Currency means nothing if you still ain't free. Money breeds jealousy. Take the game from me; I hope for better days. Trouble comes naturally. Running from authorities. 'Til they capture me, and my aim is to spread more smiles than tears. Utilize lessons learned from my childhood years."

"I ain't a killer, but don't push me Revenge is like the sweetest joy next to gettin' pussy."

"Some people say I was a thug and a gangster; other people remember me as a poet and a born leader. But I'm saying to you, measure a man by his actions fully, through his whole life, from the beginning to the end."

"Remember, this country had a man named J. Edgar Hoover, whose job it was to destroy the credibility of any black man coming up."

"My mother was pregnant with me while she was in prison. She was her own attorney, never been to law school. She was facing 300 and something odd years. One black woman, pregnant, beat the case. That just goes to show you the strength of a black woman and the strength of the oppressed."

"When I was a little baby, I remember that one moment of calm peace, and three minutes after that, it was on."

"But in my homeboys' high school, it's not like that. They don't have trips to go see this Broadway play, they don't read things we read. They didn't know when I was like: "Yo, Shakespeare's dope.""

"The same crime element that white people are scared of black people are scared of. While they waiting for legislation to pass, we next door to the killer. All them killers they let out, they're in that building. Just because we black, we get along with the killers? What is that? We need protection too."

"You have to be logical. You know? If I know that in this hotel room they have food every day, and I'm knocking on the door every day to eat, and they open the door, let me see the party, let me see them throwing salami all over, I mean, just throwing food around, but they're telling me there's no food."

"Every day, I'm standing outside trying to sing my way in: We are hungry, please let us in. We are hungry, please let us in. After about a week that song is gonna change to: We hungry, we need some food. After two, three weeks, it's like: Give me the food Or I'm breaking down the door. After a year you're just like: I'm picking the lock. Coming through the door blasting."

"It's like, you hungry, you reached your level. We asked ten years ago. We was asking with the Panthers. We was asking with them, the Civil Rights Movement. We was asking. Those people that asked are dead and in jail. So now what do you think we're gonna do? Ask?"

"No, you don't wanna get me started. Jell-O with hair all in the mold. I'd be like, "Damn, man, how are you gonna mess up Jell-O?" Jell-O is so wholesome and family-like. It just ruins it for me. To have a hair in there, yeah. I mean, I'm like, "Come on, Bill Cosby pumps this, man!""

"And you can't go, "There's a hair in my Jell-O. I'd like to send this back. Can I see the cook, please?" The cook is a big dude named Bubba Joe."

"I got shot. I always felt like I'd be shot. Somebody was trying to do me some harm because a lot of people don't like me. But I didn't think it was gonna happen at that particular moment."

"Niggers was the ones with the rope, hanging off trees; Niggas are the ones with gold ropes, hanging out at clubs."

"Measure a man by his actions fully, through his whole life, from the beginning to the end."

"Coming to grips with my past, it was hard. I don't feel like what I did was so evil, I just feel like the way I was living, and my mentality, was part of my progression to be a man."

"I'm not saying I'm gonna change the world, but I guarantee that I will spark the brain that will change the world."

"You grow, we all grow, we're made to grow. You either evolve or disappear."

"Keep ya head up. Do what you gotta do. And then, inside of you, I will be reborn."

"The real tragedy is that there are some ignorant brothers out here. That's why I'm not on this all-white or all-black shit. I'm on this all-real or all fake shit with people, whatever color you are. Because niggas will do you. I mean, there's some [foul] niggas out there [in the streets]; the same niggas that did Malcolm X, the same niggas that did Jesus Christ; every brother ain't a brother. They will do you. So just because it's black, don't mean it's cool. And just because it's white don't mean it's evil."

"But I know for a fact that had I had a father, I'd have some discipline. I'd have more confidence. Your mother cannot calm you down the way a man can. Your mother can't reassure you the way a man can. My mother couldn't show me where my manhood was. You need a man to teach you how to be a man. When I was young I was quiet, withdrawn. I read a lot, wrote poetry, kept a diary. I watched TV all day. I stayed in front of the television. It was when I was in front of the TV by myself, being alone in the house by myself, having to cook dinner by myself, eat by myself. Just being by myself and looking at TV, at families and all these people out there in this pretend world. I knew I could be part of it if I pretended too, So early on I just watched and emulated ... and I just thirsted for that. I thought if I could be and act like those characters, act like those people, I could have some of their joy. If I could act like I had a big family I wouldn't feel as lonely."

"Again, it’s good that the judges pushed back against those attacks on 2Pac’s artistry and his constitutional right, but we’ve seen that since that time, prosecutors have continued to use rap lyrics to try to chill free expression."

"Attorney Cole and Linda Sue Davidson’s hypothesis that Hip-Hop music promoted actionable violence was not a standalone occurrence. In 1995, attorney Ann T. Bowe tried what was referred to as the “rap defense.” She alleged that 2Pac’s guest verse on South Central Cartel’s ’N Gatz We Truss was what led two Milwaukee teenagers to shoot and kill a police officer. “The violent anti-police lyrics appear to have acted as command hallucinations which influenced his behavior,” said Bowe. “This young man insists that certain passages in these songs are so much a part of his consciousness that it was as if they just kept playing over and over in his head that night.”"

"This suit isn’t just about some storyteller spouting militant rhetoric here. 2Pac is dangerously serious."

"Ob Sie Adeles "Skyfall" von Megan Marie Hart intonieren, von Kylie Minogue piepsen oder von Tupac Shakur rappen lassen, macht einen Unterschied."

"One of the most beloved and influential rappers of all time, Tupac Shakur, otherwise known as 2Pac, played an essential role in popularizing the gangsta rap genre and rap music as a whole. His seminal hits “California Love,” “All Eyez On Me” and “Changes” helped make the rapper a household name during the decade, and many of his albums are still regarded as foundational pillars to California’s rap scene."

"2Pacalypse Now (1991)"

"Strictly 4 My N.I.G.G.A.Z (1993)"

"Thug Life: Thug Life Vol. 1 (1994)"

"Me Against the World (1995)"

"All Eyez on Me (1996)"

"Makaveli: The Don Killuminati: 7 Day Theory (1996)"

"R U Still Down? (1997)"

"2Pac's Greatest Hits (1998)"

"Still I Rise (2Pac + Outlawz) (1999)"

"The Lost Tapes (1989/released 2000)"

"The Rose that Grew from Concrete (2000)"

"Until the End of Time (2001)"

"Better Dayz (2002)"

"Tupac Resurrection (2003)"

"Nu-Mixx Klazzics (2003)"

"2Pac Live (2004)"

"Loyal to the Game (2004)"

"The Rose Vol. 2 (2005)"

"Live At The House Of Blues (with Outlawz, Dogg Pound, Snoop Dogg, K-Ci & JoJo) (2005)"

"Pac's Life (2006)"

"Best Of 2Pac Vol 1:Thug and Vol 2:Life (2007)"

"You know the day destroys the night, Night divides the day, Tried to run — Tried to hide — Break on through to the other side!"

"We chased our pleasures here, Dug our treasures there, But can you still recall The time we cried? Break on through to the other side!"

"It hurts to set you free, but you’ll never follow me."

"People are strange when you're a stranger Faces look ugly when you're alone Women seem wicked when you're unwanted Streets are uneven when you're down."

"When you're strange Faces come out of the rain When you're strange No one remembers your name When you're strange."

"Five to one, baby One in five No one here gets out alive, now You get yours, baby I'll get mine Gonna make it, baby If we try."

"The old get older And the young get stronger May take a week And it may take longer They got the guns But we got the numbers Gonna win, yeah We're takin' over Come on!"

"Hello, I love you, won't you tell me your name? Hello, I love you, let me jump in your game."

"Take an Indian home to lunch."

"The future's uncertain and the end is always near"

"At first flash of Eden, We race down to the sea. Standing there on Freedom's shore. Waiting for the sun..."

"This is the strangest life I’ve ever known."

"There's a killer on the road His brain is squirming like a toad."

"Listen to this, and I'll tell you 'bout the heartache I'll tell you 'bout the heartache and the loss of God."

"I'll tell you this — No eternal reward will forgive us now for wasting the dawn."

"Mute nostril agony."

"There are things known and things unknown and in between are the doors."

"Don't let me die in an automobile I wanna lie in an open field Want the snakes to suck my skin Want the worms to be my friends Want the birds to eat my eyes As here I lie The clouds fly by"

"Alright listen man, we got a special treat for you now. This is a little tour-de-force that we've only done a couple times in front of strangers, and it starts off kinda quiet, so if everybody just kinda relax, take a few deep breaths, think about your eventual end and what's gonna happen tonight; and we'll try and do something good to your head, right man? I don't know if you're aware of it, but this whole evening is being taped for eternity and beyond that too. And so listen man, if you want to be represented in eternity with some uncouth language then I hope you'll stand up on the top of your seat and shout it out very clearly or we're not going to get it on tape. Don't worry, the operation won't take long and you'll feel much better in the morning."

"I see myself as a huge fiery comet, a shooting star. Everyone stops, points up and gasps "Oh look at that!" Then — whoosh, and I'm gone... and they'll never see anything like it ever again... and they won't be able to forget me — ever."

"I think, in these days, especially in the States, you have to be a politician or an assassin or something, to really be a superstar."

"People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain."

"Yoga powers. To make oneself invisible or small. To become gigantic and reach to the farthest things. To change the course of nature. To place oneself anywhere in space or time. To summon the dead. To exalt senses and perceive inaccessible images, of events on other worlds, in one's deepest inner mind, or in the minds of others."

"(Windows work two ways, mirrors one way.) You never walk through mirrors or swim through windows."

"The world becomes an apparently infinite, yet possibly finite, card game. Image combinations, permutations, comprise the world game."

"Cinema has evolved in two paths. One is spectacle. Like the phantasmagoria, its goal is the creation of a total substitute sensory world. The other is peep show, which claims for its realm both the erotic and the untampered observance of real life, and imitates the keyhole or voyeur's window without need of color, noise, grandeur."

"The subject says "I see first lots of things which dance — then everything becomes gradually connected"."

"Few would defend a small view of Alchemy as "Mother of Chemistry", and confuse its true goal with those external metal arts. Alchemy is an erotic science, involved in buried aspects of reality, aimed at purifying and transforming all being and matter. Not to suggest that material operations are ever abandoned. The adept holds to both the mystical and physical work."

"They can picture love affairs of chemicals and stars, a romance of stones, or the fertility of fire. Strange, fertile correspondences the alchemists sensed in unlikely orders of being. Between men and planets, plants and gestures, words and weather."

"Cinema returns us to anima, religion of matter, which gives each thing its special divinity and sees gods in all things and beings. Cinema, heir of alchemy, last of an erotic science."

"The Lords. Events take place beyond our knowledge or control. Our lives are lived for us. We can only try to enslave others. But gradually, special perceptions are being developed. The idea of the "Lords" is beginning to form in some minds. We should enlist them into bands of perceivers to tour the labyrinth during their mysterious nocturnal appearances. The Lords have secret entrances and they know disguises. But they give themselves away in minor ways. Too much glint of light in the eye. A wrong gesture. Too long and curious a glance."

"More or less, we're all afflicted with the psychology of the voyeur. Not in a strictly clinical or criminal sense, but in our whole physical and emotional stance before the world. Whenever we seek to break this spell of passivity, our actions are cruel and awkward and generally obscene, like an invalid who has forgotten to walk."

"I can't believe this is happening I can't believe all these people are sniffing each other & backing away teeth grinning hair raised, growling, here in the slaughtered wind"

"Do you dare deny my potency my kindness or forgiveness?"

"Camel caravans bear witness guns to Caesar. Hordes crawl and seep inside the walls. The streets flow stone. Life goes on absorbing war. Violence kills the temple of no sex."

"Cool pools from a tired land sink now in the peace of evening Clouds weaken and die. The sun, an orange skull, whispers quietly, becomes an island, & is gone. There they are watching us everything will be dark. The light changed. We were aware knee-deep in the fluttering air as the ships move on trains in their wake."

"This is it no more fun the death of all joy has come."

"Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind. Me and my mother and father, and a grandmother and a grandfather. were driving through the desert, at dawn, and a truck load of Indian workers had either hit another car, or just — I don't know what happened — but there were Indians scattered all over the highway, bleeding to death. So the car pulls up and stops. That was the first time I tasted fear. I musta' been about four — like a child is like a flower, his head is just floating in the breeze, man. The reaction I get now thinking about it, looking back — is that the souls of the ghosts of those dead Indians... maybe one or two of 'em... were just running around freaking out, and just leaped into my soul. And they're still there."

"Do you know the warm progress under the stars? Do you know we exist? Have you forgotten the keys to the kingdom? Have you been born yet & are you alive?"

"Let's reinvent the gods, all the myths of the ages Celebrate symbols from deep elder forests"

"Now listen to this... Ill tell you about texas radio and the big beat Soft driven, slow and mad Like some new language Reaching your head with the cold, sudden fury of a divine messenger Let me tell you about heartache and the loss of god Wandering, wandering in hopeless night Out here in the perimeter there are no stars... Out here we is stoned... Immaculate."

"O great creator of being grant us one more hour to perform our art and perfect our lives The moths & atheists are doubly divine & dying We live, we die and death not ends it"

"I touched her thigh and death smiled"

"We have assembled inside this ancient & insane theatre To propagate our lust for life & flee the swarming wisdom of the streets"

"Resident mockery give us an hour for magic"

"I'm sick of dour faces Staring at me from the T.V. Tower. I want roses in my garden bower; dig?"

"Death makes angels of us all and gives us wings where we had shoulders smooth as raven's claws"

"I will not go Prefer a feast of Friends To the Giant family"

"The program for this evening is not new. You have seen This entertainment through and through. You've seen your birth, your life and death; you might recall all of the rest — (did you have a good world when you died?) — enough to base a movie on?"

"They're making a joke of our universe"

"Do you know freedom exists in a school book Did you know madmen are running our prisons Within a jail Within a gaol Within a white free protestant maelstrom We're perched headlong on the edge of boredom We're reaching for death on the end of a candle We're trying for something that's already found us."

"Always a playground instructor, never a Killer"

"Her cunt gripped him like a warm friendly hand."

"Indian, Indian what did you die for? Indian says, nothing at all."

"Lying on stained wretched sheets with the bleeding virgin, we could plan a murder...or start a religion."

"You know that it would be untrue You know that I would be a liar If I was to say to you Girl, we couldn't get much higher. Come on baby, light my fire — Come on baby, light my fire — Try to set the night on fire."

"There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception."

"He was giving voice in a rock 'n' roll setting to the Oedipus complex, at the time a widely discussed tendency in Freudian psychology. He wasn't saying he wanted to do that to his own mom and dad. He was re-enacting a bit of Greek drama. It was theatre!"

"Jim's contribution to music was that Jim was real. Jim was real on stage. Jim was real when he wrote his songs, when he sang his songs in the studio. He was not a performer. He was not an entertainer. He was not a showman. He was a shaman. He was possessed."

"The beautiful are shyer than the ugly, for they move in a world that does not ask for beauty."

"The same piece of music alters at each hearing. But oh, the need to repeat and repeat and repeat unchanged the sexual experience."

"Art's the biggest vanity: the assumption that one's view of peace or fright or beauty is permanently communicable."

"Art means to dare — and to have been right."

"Very frankly, I am opposed to people being programmed by others. My whole approach in broadcasting has always been 'You are an important person just the way you are. You can make healthy decisions.' Maybe I'm going on too long, but I just feel that anything that allows a person to be more active in the control of his or her life, in a healthy way, is important."

"When I was a child and my mother and I would read about such events in the newspapers or see them in newsreels, she used to tell me, “Always look for the helpers. There’s always someone who is trying to help.”"

"There was something else my mother did that I've always remembered: "Always look for the helpers," she'd tell me. "There's always someone who is trying to help.""

"Isn’t it amazing how much human beings are able to take? I wonder what the breaking point is. But I always look for the faithful remnant. You think that everything is lost and nobody believes in anything that is healthy anymore and all of a sudden you find this faithful remnant of hope. It’s like my mother said, always look for the helpers. At the edge of any disaster, you will find them."

"This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, 'You've made this day a special day, by just your being you. There's no person in the whole world like you; and I like you just the way you are.' And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health."

"You know, I think everybody longs to be loved, and longs to know that he or she is lovable. And, consequently, the greatest thing that we can do is to help somebody know that they're loved and capable of loving."

"Yes, when I was here the first word of the alma mater was 'Men…Men of Dartmouth, give a rouse…' Well, now the first word is 'Dear.' Some things change for the better."

"Our world hangs like a magnificent jewel in the vastness of space. Every one of us is a part of that jewel. A facet of that jewel. And in the perspective of infinity, our differences are infinitesimal."

"Well, what is essential about you? And who are those who have helped you become the person that you are? Anyone who has ever graduated from a college, anyone who has ever been able to sustain a good work, has had at least one person and often many who have believed in him or her. We just don't get to be competent human beings without a lot of different investments from others."

"When I say it's you I like, I'm talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed."

"I believe that appreciation is a holy thing, that when we look for what's best in the person we happen to be with at the moment, we're doing what God does; so in appreciating our neighbor, we're participating in something truly sacred."

"Vermont is a small state which makes an enormous difference."

"It's not the honors and the prizes and the fancy outsides of life which ultimately nourish our souls. It's the knowing that we can be trusted, that we never have to fear the truth, that the bedrock of our very being is good stuff."

"It's our insides that make us who we are, that allow us to dream and wonder and feel for others. That's what's essential. That's what will always make the biggest difference in our world."

"Little by little we human beings are confronted with situations that give us more and more clues that we aren't perfect."

"If only you could sense how important you are to the lives of those you meet; how important you can be to people you may never even dream of. There is something of yourself that you leave at every meeting with another person."

"As human beings, our job in life is to help people realize how rare and valuable each one of us really is, that each of us has something that no one else has—or ever will have—something inside that is unique to all time. It's our job to encourage each other to discover that uniqueness and to provide ways of developing its expression."

"Fame is a four letter word and like tape, or zoom, or face, or pain, or life, or love, what ultimately matters is what we do with it."

"Both Joanne and I can recall many times when we wish we'd said or done something different. But we didn't, and we've learned not to feel too guilty about that. What gives me my good feelings is that we always cared and always tried to do our best."

"Children are to be respected and I respect them deeply. They've taught me an awful lot."

""Bueno, si mi pueblo perece, por falta de conocimiento. Aqui le va una aspirina"

"Disco is a major influence in the world of fashion. It is a dynamic factor in contemporary advertising. It is a message from every consumer that there has been a rediscovery of America's greatest by-product: fun."

"Hype. What a marvellous, misused word. If you hype something and it succeeds, you're a genius, it wasn't hype; if you hype it and it fails, then it's just a hype."

"Disco was brand new then and there were a few jocks that had monstrous sound systems but they wouldn't dare play this kind of music. They would never play a record where only two minutes of the song was all it was worth. They wouldn't buy those types of records. The type of mixing that was out then was blending from one record to the next or waiting for the record to go off and wait for the jock to put the needle back on."

"Herc really slipped up. With the monostrous power he had he couldn't mix too well. He was playing little breaks but it would sound so sloppy. I noticed that the mixer he was using was a GLI 3800. It was a very popular mixer at that time. It's a scarcity today but it's still one of the best mixers GLI ever made. At the time he wasn't using no cueing. In other words, the hole was there for a headphone to go in but I remember he never had headphones over his ears. All of a sudden, Herc had headphones but I guess he was so used to dropping the needle down by eyesight and trying to mix it that from the audio part of it he couldn't get into it too well."

"A scratch is nothing but the back-cueing that you hear in your ear before you push it out to the crowd. All you have to know is mathematically how many times to scratch it and when to let it go — when certain things will enhance the record you're listening to. For instance, if you're playing a record with drums--horns would sound nice to enhance it so you get a record with horns and slip it in at certain times."

"Now he took the music of like Mandrill, like "Fencewalk", certain disco records that had funky percussion breaks like The Incredible Bongo Band when they came out with "Apache" and he just kept that beat going. It might be that certain part of the record that everybody waits for ]]— they just let their inner self go and get wild. The next thing you know the singer comes back in and you'd be mad."

"Herc really slipped up. With the monstrous power he had he couldn't mix too well. He was playing little breaks but it would sound so sloppy. I noticed that the mixer he was using was a GLI 3800. It was a very popular mixer at that time. It's a scarcity today but it's still one of the best mixers GLI ever made. At the time he wasn't using no queueing. In other words, the hole was there for a headphone to go in but I remember he never had headphones over his ears. All of a sudden, Herc had headphones but I guess he was so used to dropping the needle down by eyesight and trying to mix it that from the audio part of it he couldn't get into it too well."

"The only trend I do not like in rap right now is the message rap. I consider the message rap the equivalent of what strings were to rock 'n' roll in the late '50s - a capitulation to the adult norm who can't accept the music on its own terms. The people who considered "Sixty Minute Man" by Billy Ward and the , "Annie Had a Baby" - as the pinnacles of '50s R&B now are super uptight over the - in quotes - hotel/motel lyrics of rap. Rap is definitely as true to the essence of rock 'n roll as anything that's out there today."

"[On the question "Is bird imitation valid in jazz?"] I don’t know if it's valid in jazz, [...] but I enjoy it. It somehow comes in as part of the development of what I'm doing. Sometimes I can't do it. At home [in California] I used to play, and the birds always used to whistle with me. I would stop what I was working on and play with the birds."

"When you hear music, after it's over, it's gone in the air. You can never capture it again."

"Whenever I get dumped, I nail the door shut so that no one can come inside, get a towel and clip it around my neck so it's like a Superman cape, take off my shoes so I can slide across the room, and...get a fake mic, like a celery stick or a pen, and I play any record that features the vocalist Ronnie James Dio. And you can just pretend you're Dio, because on every album he does, he has minimum one, usually three, *EVIL WOMAN LOOK OUT!*- songs. And if you wanna point like Dio, it's a three-finger point. (heavy metal voice) 'The exit is that way. Evil LURKS! Evil lurks in twilight! Dances in the DARK! Evil woman! Just WALK AWAY!'"

"You always know the mark of a coward. A coward hides behind freedom. A brave person stands in front of freedom and defends it for others."

"Don't hide behind the Constitution or the Bible. If you're against gay marriage, just be honest, put a scarlet 'H' on your shirt, and say, 'I am a homophobe!'"

"If I let you, you would make me destroy myself. But in order to survive you, I must first survive myself. I can sink no further and I cannot forgive you. There's no choice but to confront you, to engage you, to erase you. I've gone to great lengths to expand my threshold of pain. I will use my mistakes against you. There's no other choice. Shameless now. Nameless now. Nothing now. No one now. But my soul must be iron cause my fear is naked. I'm naked and fearless - and my fear is naked!"

"Listen to the stage manager and get on stage when they tell you to. No one has time for the rock star act. None of the techs backstage care if you're David Bowie or the milkman. When you act like a jerk, they are completely unimpressed with the infantile display that you might think comes with your dubious status. They were there hours before you building the stage, and they will be there hours after you leave tearing it down. They should get your salary, and you should get theirs."

"I got three letters today telling me that I'm god. Why can't I pay the rent?"

"My pen knows what to do. I close my eyes and I see this girl who glows. A girl who radiates. When she smiles, she beams. She warms my heart. I open my eyes with a feeling of floating past all the garbage around me. I will emerge unscathed because I will not endeavor to hide myself from whatever is coming. Bring on the worst. I welcome it with open arms."

"You would think that pot had some kind of power; I mean come on, it’s a plant, not a reason for living. Controlled by a plant, how hilarious. A plant! A fucking plant!"

"BULLLLLSHIT!!"

"The Iron never lies to you. You can walk outside and listen to all kinds of talk, get told that you're a god or a total bastard. The Iron will always kick you the real deal. The Iron is the great reference point, the all-knowing perspective giver. Always there like a beacon in the pitch black. I have found the Iron to be my greatest friend. It never freaks out on me, never runs. Friends may come and go. But two hundred pounds is always two hundred pounds."

"When life hands you a lemon, say "Oh yeah, I like lemons. What else you got?"

"Knowledge without Mileage is bullshit to me."

"If I lose the light of the sun, I will write by candlelight, moonlight, no light. If I lose paper and ink, I will write in blood on forgotten walls. I will write always. I will capture nights all over the world and bring them to you."

"I know what we're gonna do! OOOOO - REAL ROCK POWER! There'll be nothing left. It'll be like Godzilla stepping on a cupcake. You're outta here! You're dead! YOU'RE DEAD! And so they clear, we put our gear on and we walk out there. 14,000 people have dwindled to... about six. It's alright! They'll come back! So we go out there - 'OOOOO POOOSSSHHHHH!' Three songs later, there's about 3,000 people. Four songs into the set, there's about 800 people. No response whatsoever. We get to the end of the set, there's like eight guys standing a mile away, 'Fuck you!'"

"I have to use a handbasket, which says 'I'm only kidding. I'm not really here buying a lot of shit. I'm just buying a few things. I'm just goofing around. Hey!' It's a way of avoiding the truth. It's like when you come into your apartment, and your two buddies are fucking each other. You know, like 'Uhhh! Ooohhh! Oh - ha ha ha ha! You're wondering about this, huh? Ha! We were just kiddin' around! We were just goofin' around! Nothin' else to do; let's fuck each other! Go figure!'"

"'HOW YA DOIN'!? PHIL! PETE! TOM! SAM, RIGHT?' I grab a shopping cart. Fuck the handbasket; I'm going big today. Goin' up to everybody in there: 'HEY, HOW YA DOIN'! HAVING A GOOD BED, BATH & BEYOND EXPERIENCE TODAY? RIGHT ON! HEY, TONY! HOW ARE THOSE FUCKIN' CANDLES DOING? ANY CANDLES ON SALE?'"

"The Ninja, as you know, operates by stealth. And so, case in point: I put out records... no one hears them! I make videos... (whispers) no one sees! I go on tour.... (whispers) no one knows! NINJA! I was never here!"

"Cynicism is only intellectual sloth."

"I make music all the time that no-one ever hears. Y' know, I sing in the shower, I hit on things. Music is life - life is music. Of all people, Nietzsche said 'Life without music is an error'. And so I'll be making music one way or another. Oh believe me, I make music..I've made whole records that no-one heard. Oh they came out, no-one bought them! We used to do whole secret tours, we used to stand outside like 'We're playing tonight!' and only the bouncers and bartenders would see you. I'm used to it. I'm that tree that falls in the forest."

"Someone who would go across a desert that can kill you, to get to another country? You want to be an American *that* bad? 'Cause I've never had to lift my damn finger to be an American. I'm honored to share a country with you."

"It is no surprise to me that hardly anyone tells the truth about how they feel. The smart ones keep themselves to themselves for good reason. Why would you want to tell anyone anything that's dear to you? Even when you like them and want nothing more than to be closer than close to them? It's so painful to be next to someone you feel strongly about and know you can't say the things you want to."

"I must tell you that I was always afraid of the fury with which I loved you. It overwhelmed me. I thought it beyond comprehension, therefore my silence."

"I will never say the things that I want to say to you. I know the damage it would do. I love you more than I hate my loneliness and pain."

"They say true love only comes around once and you have to hold out and be strong until then. I have been waiting. I have been searching. I am a man under the moon, walking the streets of earth until dawn. There's got to be someone for me. It's not too much to ask. Just someone to be with. Someone to love. Someone to give everything to. Someone."

"Thank you for touching me. Some of the only moments worth living were spent with you. Not you especially, the collective you."

"If I was a woman these days, I'd be killing motherfuckers. My handgun would never cool and my hands would be covered in testicular blood. I would have a horrible reputation with a lot of men because I would be calling them on their weak bullshit left and right."

"Basically, men are afraid of women and can't handle the fact that they came out of the same thing they spend the rest of their lives trying to get back into."

"If I was gay, there would be no closet, you would never see the closet I came out of. Why? I would have burned it for kindling by the time I was 12. Because I know with all certainty in my mind, there is nothing wrong with being gay, and you know it."

"We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means--all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity."

"I would say that when hope dies, action begins."

"A very poor kid came up to me after a talk and said 'I want to go blow up a factory.' I asked how old he was and he said 17. I said 'have you ever had sex?' He said 'no.' I said 'just remember if you get caught you aren't going to have sex for twenty years at least.' That's not saying that one person having sex is worth the salmon. I'm not saying it's a reason not to act, I'm saying don't be stupid."

"I've never written this before in public, but my first thought on September 11 when I heard someone was attacking the World Trade Center is, 'Ah, so now it begins. Someone is finally fighting back. Given the terror that the United States routinely inflicts on people (including nonhumans, of course) the world over (and of course now a couple of years later the United States calls these programs of systematic terror 'Shock and Awe'), I'm surprised it didn't happen long ago. The poor have been very patient and long suffering, more patient and long suffering than anyone could ever expect.' That is what I thought."

"I want to bring down civilization. It's really clear that civilization is killing the planet. I’m interested in living in a world that has more wild salmon every year than the year before. A world that has more migratory songbirds every year than the year before. A world that has less dioxins and flame retardants in mothers' breast milk. A world not being destroyed. A world where krill populations aren’t collapsing. A world where there are not dead zones in the oceans. A world not being systematically dismantled. I want to live in a world that is not being killed. I will do whatever it takes to get there."

"People often say that violence accomplishes nothing, that it's ineffective. Violence is dreadfully effective. That's why those in power use it."

"Is it possible to talk about fundamental social change without asking ourselves questions we too often refuse to ask, such as 'What if those in power are murderous? What if they're not willing to listen to reason at all? Should we continue to approach them nonviolently? . . . When is violence an appropriate means to stop injustice?' But with the world dying - or rather being killed - we no longer have the luxury to change the subject or delete the question. It's a question that won't go away."

"Jeanette [Armstrong, "a traditional Okanagan Indian"] said, 'Attitudes about the species communication are the primary difference between western and indigenous philosophies. Even the most progressive western philosophers still generally believe that listening to the land is a metaphor.' She paused, then continued emphatically, 'It's not a metaphor. It's how the world is.'"

"I sat at the computer at work, debugging. I was bored. It was afternoon. I was twenty-two. It was June. Along the front range of the Rocky Mountains in Colorado, thunderheads move in almost every afternoon between May and early July. They materialize, darken the day, spit a few drops, open the sky with lightning, then disappear like so many dreams."

"Turning away from the computer I saw through my own narrow window (at least it opened) the green, the blue, the flashes. I looked to the clock, the screen, the window. An hour passed, then two. I looked again at the clock and saw it had been only twenty minutes. I willed the second-hand, the minute-hand, the hour-hand to move faster, to deliver me to five o'clock when I would be released as from my prison term. Then suddenly I stopped, struck by the absurdity of wishing away the only thing I've got. Eight hours, eighty years, it was all too similar. Would I wish away the years until the day of my retirement, until my time was once again my own? At work I tried to keep busy to make the hours pass quickly. It was no different when watching television, socializing, moving frenetically--there are so many ways to kill time."

"I remember staring at the computer screen--light green letters on dark--then at the clock, and finally at my outstretched fingers held a foot in front of my face. And then it dawned on me: selling the hours of my life was no different from selling my fingers one by one. We've only so many hours, so many fingers; when they're gone, they're gone for good."

"I quit work two weeks later--having sold another eighty of my hours--and knew I could never again work a regular job."

"I could not have learned to listen to coyotes without having first learned to listen to my unwillingness to sell my hours, then to listen to the signals of my body, then to listen to the disease that has made my insides my home, and thus become a part of me. And I could not have learned to listen to coyotes without having talked to other people courageous enough to validate my perception of an animate world. I talked to the writer Christoper Manes, who said, 'For most cultures through history--including our own in preliterate times--the entire world used to speak. Anthropologists call this animism, the most pervasive worldview in human history. Animistic cultures listen to the natural world. For them, birds have something to say. So do worms, wolves, and waterfalls.' Later the philosopher Thomas Berry told me, 'The universe is composed of subjects to be communed with, not objects to be exploited. Everything has its own voice. Thunder and lightning and stars and planets, flowers, birds, animals, trees--all these have voices, and they constitute a community of existence that is profoundly related.'"

"In order for us to maintain our way of living, we must, in a broad sense, tell lies to each other, and especially to ourselves. It is not necessary that the lies be particularly believable. The lies act as barriers to truth. These barriers to truth are necessary because without them many deplorable acts would become impossibilities."

"There can be no real peace when living with someone who has already declared war, no peace but capitulation. And even that, as we see around us, doesn't lead to further peace but to further degradation and exploitation. We're responsible for not only what we do but for what is in our power to stop. Before we can speak of peace, we have to speak honestly of stopping, by any and all means possible, those who have declared war on the world and on us. Those who destroy wont stop because we ask nicely. There is only one language that they understand, and everyone here knows what it is. Yet we don't speak of it openly."

"If we wish to stop the atrocities, we will need to understand and change the social and economic conditions that cause them."

"If your community is founded on an injustice, that injustice cannot be questioned."

"How, precisely, do you define a police state? Is it the number of police per capita? How about the number of prisons? Police use of machine guns or armored personnel carriers? The use of the police or the military to put down strikes, or to otherwise "keep the trains running on time," as was Mussolini's specialty? Perhaps it's the use of the police or the military to halt civil unrest. Or maybe the widespread use of curfews. Arbitrary confiscation of private property. How about this: could a police state be defined, as in Nazi Germany, by the use of force to segregate members of a specific race into concentration camps or prisons?"

"Perception creates behavior. Perception encourages behavior. And because this institution--this artifice--continues to socially reinforce patterns of perception and behavior, if this behavior is destructive, it may not be a bad idea to eliminate or curtail the institution."

"Much was made by abolitionists that the King James version of the Bible didn't use the word slaves, but, instead, servants. This meant, in their minds, that God didn't really approve of slavery. But that argument was linguistic at best. Slavery was codified and even sanctified in the tenth commandment, throwing slaves (and wives) in with other property belonging to one's neighbor that one must not covet. The Bible even regulated--as opposed to banning outright--the killing of slaves, stating that if a slave were beaten to death, the slave owner should be punished (though not killed himself, as would be his fate were he to kill a freeman), but if the slave didn't die until a day or two after the beating, the slave owner "shall not be punished, for he [the slave] is his money.""

"To believe Christianity stands in opposition to slavery is at best to think anachronistically and at worst to not understand Christianity."

"If any thing can be predicated as universally true of uncultivated man, it is that he will not labour beyond what is absolutely necessary to maintain his existence."

"Slavery was a central concern of governance form the time of the first nation-state. The Code of Hammurabi, the earliest known set of laws for governing an empire, prescribed death for anyone who harbored a fugitive or otherwise helped a slave to escape. The relationship between the law and bondage goes back even farther: Indeed, the oldest extant legal documents don't concern the sale of land, houses, or even animals, but slaves."

"In order for a slave--or, for that matter, a slaveholder--to become free, a series of successive perceptions must be realized. First, the person must perceive that the owners (and slaves) are merely human, that is, putting all rhetoric aside, that there exists a dichotomy of privilege and exploitation, and that the privilege is a result of exploitation. … The second realization is, once again, that the owners and slaves are merely human, meaning this time that the exploitation and consequent privilege are not inevitable, but the result of social arrangements and force (as well as a huge dollop of bad luck on the part of those enslaved). … The third realization is yet again that the owners are merely human, by which I now mean they are vulnerable. Wealth does not protect them."

"I am in this same river. I can't much help it. I admit it: I'm racist. The other night I saw a group (or maybe a pack?) or white teenagers standing in a vacant lot, clustered around a 4x4, and I crossed the street to avoid them; had they been black, I probably would have taken another street entirely. And I'm misogynistic. I admit that, too. I'm a shitty cook, and a worse house cleaner, probably in great measure because I've internalized the notion that these are woman's work. Of course, I never admit that's why I don't do them: I always say I just don't much enjoy those activities (which is true enough; and it's true enough also that many women don't enjoy them either), and in any case, I've got better things to do, like write books and teach classes where I feel morally superior to pimps. And naturally I value money over life. Why else would I own a computer with a hard drive put together in Thailand by women dying of job-induced cancer? Why else would I own shirts made in a sweatshop in Bangladesh, and shoes put together in Mexico? The truth is that, although many of my best friends are people of color (as the cliche goes), and other of my best friends are women, I am part of this river: I benefit from the exploitation of others, and I do not much want to sacrifice this privilege. I am, after all, civilized, and have gained a taste for "comforts and elegancies" which can be gained only through the coercion of slavery. The truth is that like most others who benefit from this deep and broad river, I would probably rather die (and maybe even kill, or better, have someone kill for me) than trade places with the men, women, and children who made my computer, my shirt, my shoes."

"Property has always been the central consideration of the United States government, but it has become even more so over time. Between the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, to provide just one obvious, and in some ways, silly, example (silly because all of the terms are seemingly obvious, yet in fact nearly impossible to adequately define) and the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1868, the inalienable right with which men [sic] are self-evidently endowed by their Creator, and which may not be abridged by the State, changed from "Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness," to life, liberty, and property. The Fourteenth Amendment, passed during the KKK's maiden reign of terror, ostensibly to protect the rights of blacks from racist state governments, has been used far more often to protect the rights to property: Of the Fourteenth Amendment cases brought before the Supreme Court between 1890 and 1910, only nineteen dealt with the rights of blacks, while two hundred and eighty-eight dealt with the rights of corporations."

"I thought that, given the system of rewards central to our economic system, in which profit maximization is valued above all else and specifically above life, it is probably just as irresistible to the owners of capital (human or otherwise) to exploit workers (and the land): "Nothing personal," they say as they load their property onto the ship bound for the Middle Passage, "but a man's gotta turn a dime.""

"It seems to me that entitlement is the key to nearly all atrocities, and that any threat to perceived entitlement will provoke hatred. The man who flayed the cat presumably felt that his employers were entitled to the cat's skin. Europeans felt that they were (and are) entitled to the land of North and South America. Slave owners clearly felt they were entitled to the labor (and the lives) of their slaves, not only in partial payment for protecting slaves from their own idleness, but also simply as a return on their capital investment. Owners of nonhuman capital today feel they, too, are entitled to the "surplus return on labor," as economists put it, as part of their reward for furnishing jobs, and to provide a return on their investment in capital. Rapists act on the belief that they are entitled to their victims' bodies, and entitled to inflict cruelty upon them. Americans act as though we are entitled to consume the majority of the world's resources, and the change the world's climate. All industrialized humans act like they're entitled to anything they want on this planet."

"From the perspective of those who are entitled, the problems begin when those they despise do not go along with--and have the power and wherewithal to not go along with--the perceived entitlement."

"Several times I have commented that hatred felt long and deeply enough no longer feels like hatred, but more like tradition, economics, religion, what have you. It is when those traditions are challenged, when the entitlement is threatened, when the masks of religion, economics, and so on are pulled away that hate transforms from its more seemingly sophisticated, "normal," chronic state--where those exploited are looked down upon, or despised--to a more acute and obvious manifestation. Hate becomes more perceptible when it is no longer normalized. Another way to say all of this is that if the rhetoric of superiority works to maintain the entitlement, hatred and direct physical force remain underground. But when that rhetoric begins to fail, force and hatred waits in the wings, ready to explode."

"Love does not imply pacifism."

"From the beginning, this culture - civilization - has been a culture of occupation."

"Civilization is based on a clearly defined and widely accepted yet often unarticulated hierarchy. Violence done by those higher on the hierarchy to those lower is nearly always invisible, that is, unnoticed. When it is noticed, it is fully rationalized. Violence done by those lower on the hierarchy to those higher is unthinkable, and when it does occur is regarded with shock, horror, and the fetishization of the victims."

"Given the current levels of violence by this culture against both humans and the natural world, however, it's not possible to speak of reductions in population and consumption that do not involve violence and privation, not because the reductions themselves would necessarily involve violence, but because violence and privation have become the default of our culture."

"I am not the first to make the case-as I have in my other work-that the industrial economy, indeed, civilization (which underpins and gives inevitable rise to it), is incompatible with human and nonhuman freedoms, and in fact with human and nonhuman life. If you accept that the industrial economy-and beneath it, civilization-is destroying the planet and creating unprecedented human suffering among the poor (and if you don't accept this, go ahead and put this book down, back away slowly, turn on the television, and take some more soma: the drug should kick in soon enough, your agitation will disappear, you'll forget everything I've said, and then everything will be perfect again, just like the voices from the television tell you over and over), then it becomes clear that the best thing that can happen, from the perspective of essentially all nonhumans as well as the vast majority of humans, is for the industrial economy (and civilization) to go away, or in the shorter run for it to be slowed as much as humanly possible during the time we await its final collapse."

"I've always wanted to blow up dams in order to save salmon, sturgeon, and other creatures whose lives depend on wild and living rivers. But that's not right. We need to blow up dams for the rivers themselves, so they can be again the rivers they once were, forever, the rivers they still want to be, the rivers they themselves are struggling and fighting to once again become."

"I got myself into a lovely little—shall we say controversy—with André Breton, by pointing out that the discipline of spontaneity, which he was asking his surrealist neophytes to adopt, was new for language but something that composers had been practicing for centuries."

"I realized by using the high notes of the chords as a melodic line, and by the right harmonic progression, I could play what I heard inside me. That's when I was born."

"l'd been getting bored with the stereotyped changes that were being used all the time at the time, and I kept thinking there's bound to be something else. I could hear it sometimes but I couldn't play it. ... I found that by using the higher intervals of a chord as a melody line and backing them with appropriately related changes I could play the thing I'd been hearing. I came alive."

"Any musician who says he is playing better either on tea, the needle, or when he is juiced, is a plain, straight liar. When I get too much to drink, I can't even finger well, let alone play decent ideas. ... You can miss the most important years of your life, the years of possible creation."

"Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn. They teach you there's a boundary line to music. But, man, there's no boundary line to art."

"Don't play the saxophone. Let it play you."

"You've got to learn your instrument. Then, you practice, practice, practice. And then, when you finally get up there on the bandstand, forget all that and just wail."

"Bird Lives!"

"I want to say something about Charlie Parker, his importance in the picture. As great as we all think Bud Powell is, where would he be without Bird. He's the first one that should remember it—he himself told me that Bird showed him the way to a means of expression. shows a good deal of personality, but it's still a take-off on Parker. You take Groovin' High, or pick at random any five records by well-known boppers, and compare the ideas and phrases. You'll see that if Charlie Parker wanted to invoke plagiarism laws, he could sue almost anyone who's made a record in the last 10 years. If I were Bird, I've have all the best boppers in the country thrown into jail."

"Bird's mind and fingers work with incredible speed. He can imply four chord changes in a melodic pattern where another musician would have trouble inserting two."

"If that wasn't Bird, I quit ... You know what's funny? Now I know that Bird was progressing still. The other cats were the ones that were standing still and making Bird sound old, you know? Bird isn't just playing riffs on here, the way his imitators do. You know how he used to be able to talk with his horn, the way he could tell you what chick he was thinking about? That's the way he's playing here. How many stars? FIFTY!"

"It sounded like a member of the Charlie Parker school. I've never liked that school—it's one of those out-of-tune, honking-type things..."

"I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn't only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around."

"During 1945, we used to go down almost every night to catch Diz and Bird wherever they were playing. We felt that if we missed hearing them play, we were missing something important. Man, the shit they were playing and doing was going down so fast, you just had to be there in person to catch it."

"Man, I promise, she's so self conscious She has no idea what she doin' in college That major that she majored in don't make no money But she won't drop out, her parents will look at her funny. Now, tell me that ain't insecurr, The concept of school seemed so securr. Sophomore, three yurrs, ain't picked a carurr."

"It seems, we living the American dream But people highest up got the lowest self esteem. The prettiest people do the ugliest things For the road to riches and diamond rings."

"We'll buy a lot of clothes, but we don't really need 'em Things we buy to cover up what's inside 'Cause they made us hate ourself and love their wealth."

"God show me the way, because the Devil's trying to break me down The only thing that I pray is that my feet don't fail me now And I don't think there's nothing I can do now to right my wrongs I wanna talk to God, but I'm afraid 'cause we ain't spoke in so long."

"To the hustlers, killers, murderers, drug dealers, even the strippers (Jesus walks with them) To the victims of welfare for we livin' in hell here, hell yeah (Jesus walks with them) Now, hear ye, hear ye, want to see Thee more clearly I know He hear me when my feet get weary 'Cause we're the almost nearly extinct We rappers is role models: we rap, we don't think I ain't here to argue about his facial features Or here to convert atheists into believers I'm just trying to say the way school needs teachers, The way Kathie Lee needed Regis, that's the way I need Jesus So here go my single, radio needs this They say you can rap about anything except for Jesus That means guns, sex, lies, videotape But if I talk about God, my record won't get played, huh?"

"I get down for my grandfather who took my mama Made her sit in that seat where white folks ain't want us to eat At the tender age of six, she was arrested for the sit-ins And with that in my blood, I was born to be different Now niggas can't make it to ballots to choose leadership But we can make it to Jacob's or to the dealership That's why I hear new music and I just don't be feeling it Racism's still alive, they just be concealin' it."

"My flow is in the pocket like Wallace, I got the bounce like hydraulics, I can't call it, I got the swerve like alcoholics. My freshman year, I was going through hella problems 'Til I built up the nerve to drop my ass up out of college."

"Always said if I rapped, I'd say somethin' significant But now I'm rapping 'bout money, hoes, and rims again."

"Told 'em I finished school, and I started my own business. They say, 'Oh you graduated?' No, I decided I was finished."

"Two words, Chi-town raised me crazy, So I live by two words: 'Fuck you, pay me' Screaming, 'Jesus, save me' You know how the game be, I can't let 'em change me 'Cause on judgment day, you gon' blame me Look, God, it's the same me And I basically know now, we get racially profiled 'Cuffed up and hosed down, pimped up and ho'd down Plus, I got a whole city to hold down From the bottom, so the top's the only place to go now."

"How do you console my mom or give her light support Tellin' her her son's on life support? And just imagine how my girl feel, On the plane scared as hell that her guy look like Emmett Till."

"And I still won't grow up, I'm a grown-ass kid Swear I should be locked up for stupid shit that I did But I'm a champion, so I turned tragedy to triumph Make music that's fire, spit my soul through the wire."

"Now that you're gone, it hit us Super hard on Thankgiving and Christmas, this can't be right. Yo, you heard the track I did man, 'This Can't Be Life'. Somebody please say grace so I can save face And have a reason to cover my face."

"I woke up early this morning with a new state of mind, A creative way to rhyme without usin' knives and guns. Keep your nose out the sky, keep your heart to God, And keep your face to the rising sun. I feel like one day you'll understand me, dawg You can still love your man and be manly, dawg"

"Now I could let these dream killers kill my self esteem, Or use my arrogance as the steam to power my dreams I use it as my gas, so they say that I'm gassed But without it I'd be last, so I ought to laugh."

"Ain't nobody expect Kanye to end up on top They expected that College Dropout to drop and then flop."

"I'm Kan, the Louis Vouitton don Bought my mom purse, now she Louis Vuitton mom I didn't play the hand I was dealt I changed my cards I prayed to the skies and I changed my stars I went to the malls and I balled too hard 'Oh My God, is that a Black card?' I turned around and replied 'Why yes, but I prefer the term African American Express.' Brains, power, and muscle like Dame, Puffy, and Russell Your boy back on his hustle, you know what I've been up to Killing y'all niggas on that lyrical shit Mayonnaise-colored Benz, I push Miracle Whips."

"And I heard 'em say Nothing's ever promised tomorrow or today From the Chi, like Tim, it's a harder way So this is in the name of love like Robert say Before you ask me to go get a job today, Can I at least get a raise on the minimum wage?"

"They say people in your life are seasons And anything that happens is for a reason The devil is alive, I feel him breathin' Claiming money is the key, so keep on dreamin' And put them lottery tickets just to tease us"

"Jay's favorite line: 'Dawg, in due time!' Now he look at me, like, 'Damn, dawg! You where I am!' A hip hop legend I think I died in that accident, 'cause this must be heaven."

"I'm tryin' to right my wrongs But it's funny, them same wrongs helped me write this song."

"How we stop the Black Panthers? Ronald Reagan cooked up an answer. Who gave Saddam anthrax? George Bush got the answers."

"I know it's past visiting hours, But can I please give her these flowers? You know the best medicine go to people that's paid. If Magic Johnson got a cure for AIDS And all the broke motherfuckers passed away, You telling me if my grandma was in the NBA, Right now, she'd be okay? But since she was just a secretary Working for the church for thirty-five years, Things supposed to stop right here?"

"Why everything that's supposed to be bad make me feel so good? Everything they told me not to is exactly what I would. Man, I tried to stop, man, I tried the best I could, but You make me smile."

"Little was known of Sierra Leone And how it connect to the diamonds we own Though it's thousands of miles away Sierra Leone connect to what we go through today Over here, it's a drug trade, we die from drugs Over there, they die from what we buy from drugs."

"I was sick about awards, couldn't nobody cure me Only playa that got robbed but kept all his jewelry Alicia Keys tried to talk some sense in him Thirty minutes later seein' there's no convincin' him What more could you ask for? The international asshole Who complain about what he is owed? And throw a tantrum like he is three years old You gotta love it though: somebody still speaks from his soul And wouldn't change by the change or the game or the fame When he came in the game, he made his own lane Now all I need is y'all to pronounce my name It's Kanye, but some of my plaques, they still say 'Kayne'."

"I wanna tell the whole world about a friend of mine This little light of mine and I'm finna let it shine I'm finna take y'all back to them better times I'm finna talk about my mama if y'all don't mind I was three years old when you and I moved to the Chi Late December, harsh winter gave me a cold You fixed me up something that was good for my soul Famous homemade chicken soup, can I have another bowl? You work late nights just to keep on the lights Mommy got me training wheels so I could keep on my bike And you would give anything in this world Michael Jackson leather and a glove, but didn't give me a curl And you never put no man over me And I love you for that, mommy, can't you see? Seven years old, caught you with tears in your eyes 'Cause a nigga cheatin', telling you lies, then I started to cry As we knelt on the kitchen floor I said mommy I'ma love you 'til you don't hurt no more And when I'm older, you ain't gotta work no more And I'ma get you that mansion that we couldn't afford."

"Forrest Gump mama said, 'Life is like a box of chocolates' My mama told me go to school, get your doctorate Somethin to fall back on, you could profit with But still supported me when I did the opposite Now I feel like there's things I gotta get, things I gotta do, just to prove to you You was getting through, can the choir, please Give me a verse of 'You Are So Beautiful To Me' Can't you see, you're like a book of poetry Maya Angelou, Nikki Giovanni, turn one page and there's my mommy."

"Good morning and look at the valedictorian Scared of the future while I hop in the DeLorean Scared to face the world, complacent career student Some people graduate, but be still stupid"

"When it feel like living's harder than dyin' For me givin' up's way harder than tryin' Lauryn Hill said her heart was in Zion I wish her heart still was in rhymin' 'Cause who the kids gon' listen to, huh? I guess me if it isn't you Last week I paid a visit to the institute They got the dropout keepin' kids in the school."

"N-Now th-that that don't kill me Can only make me stronger I need you to hurry up now 'Cause I can't wait much longer I know I got to be right now 'Cause I can't get much wronger Man, I've been waiting all night now That's how long I've been on ya"

"And I'm back on my grind A psychic read my lifeline, told me in my lifetime My name would help light up the Chicago skyline And that's why I'm Seven o'clock, that's primetime Heaven'll watch, God calling from the hotlines Why he keep giving me hot lines? I'm a star, how could I not shine?"

"I had a dream I could buy my way to heaven When I awoke, I spent that on a necklace I told God I'd be back in a second Man, it's so hard not to act reckless To whom much is given, much is tested Get arrested, guess until he get the message I feel the pressure, under more scrutiny And what I do? Act more stupidly Bought more jewelry, more Louis V My mama couldn't get through to me The drama, people suing me I'm on TV talking like it's just you and me I'm just saying how I feel, man I ain't one of the Cosbys, I ain't go to Hillman I guess the money should've changed him I guess I should've forgot where I came from."

"She don't believe in shooting stars But she believe in shoes and cars Order the hors d'oeuvres, views of the water Straight from a page of your favorite author And the weather's so breezy Man, why can't life always be this easy?"

"In my past, you on the other side of the glass Of my memory's museum I'm just sayin', hey, Mona Lisa Come home, you know you can't roam without Caesar."

"People talking shit, but when the shit hits the fan Everything I'm not made me everything I am. I know people wouldn't usually rap this But I got the facts to back this Just last year, Chicago had over six hundred caskets Man, killing's some wack shit Oh, I forgot, 'cept for when niggas is rappin' Do you know what it feel like when people is passin'? He got changed over his chains a block off Ashland I need to talk to somebody, pastor The church want tithe, so I can't afford to pay Pink slip on my door, 'cause I can't afford to stay My fifteen seconds up, but I got more to say-- 'That's enough Mr. West, please, no more today.'"

"I met this girl when I was three years old And what I loved most, she had so much soul She said, 'Excuse me, little homie, I know you don't know me But my name is Windy and I like to blow trees.' I told her in my heart is where she'll always be She never messed with entertainers 'cause they always leave She said, 'It felt like they walked and drove on me.' Knew I was gang affiliated, got on TV and told on me I guess that's why last winter she got so cold on me She said, 'Ye, keep making that platinum and gold for me!'"

"But if you really cared for her Then you wouldn't have never hit the airport to follow your dreams Sometimes I still talk to her But when I talk to her, it always seems like she talking 'bout me Every interview, I'm representin' you, makin' you proud Reach for the stars, so if you fall, you land on a cloud Jump in the crowd, spark your lighters, wave 'em around If you don't know by now, I'm talking 'bout Chi-Town."

"My big brother was B.I.G.'s brother So here's a few words from your kid brother If you admire somebody you should go ahead tell 'em People never get the flowers while they can still smell 'em."

"Last night I saw you in my dreams Now I can't wait to go to sleep And this life is all a dream So my real life starts when I go to sleep."

"Why would she make calls out the blue? Now I'm awake, sleepless in you."

"Chased the good life my whole life long Look back on my life, and my life gone Where did I go wrong? And my head keeps spinning Can't stop having these visions I gotta get with it."

"How could you be so Dr. Evil? You're bringin' out a side of me that I don't know I decided we wasn't gon' speak so Why we up 3 AM on the phone? Why do she be so mad at me for? Homie, I don't know, she's hot and cold I won't stop, won't mess my groove up 'Cause I already know how this thing go You run and tell your friends that you're leaving me They say that they don't see what you see in me You wait a couple of months, then you gon' see You'll never find nobody better than me."

"I'm a problem that'll never ever be solved I'm a monster, I'm a maven I know this world is changing Never gave in, never gave up I'm the only thing I'm afraid of No matter what, you'll never take that from me My reign is as far as your eyes can see, it's amazing."

"I'm not loving you, way I wanted to I can't keep my cool, so I keep it true I got something to lose, so I gotta move I can't keep myself and still keep you too No more wasting time, you can't wait for life We're just racing time, where's the finish line?"

"'Bout the baddest girl I ever seen Straight up out a movie scene Who knew she was a drama queen That'd turn my life to Stephen King's? Just looking at your history You're like the girl from Misery She said she ain't take it to this degree Well, let's agree to disagree You spoiled little LA girl You're just an LA girl, you need to stop it now."

"Let me know Do I still got time to grow? Things ain't always set in stone That be known, let me know Seems like street lights, glowing, happen to be Just like moments, passing, in front of me So I hopped in the cab and I paid my fare See, I know my destination, but I'm just not there In the streets I'm just not there Life's just not fair."

"On lonely nights, I start to fade Her love's a thousand miles away It's 4 AM and I can't sleep Her love is all that I can see Memories made in the coldest winter Goodbye, my friend, will I ever love again? If spring can take the snow away Can it melt away all our mistakes?"

"I fantasized 'bout this back in Chicago Mercy, mercy me, that Murciélago Beyond the truest Hey, teacher, teacher, tell me how do you respond to students? And refresh the page and restart the memory? Re-spark the soul and rebuild the energy? We stopped the ignorance, we killed the enemy Sorry for the night demons that still visit me The plan was to drink until the pain over But what's worse, the pain or the hangover?"

"Penitentiary chances, the devil dances And eventually answers to the call of autumn All them fallin' for the love of ballin' Got caught with thirty rocks, the cop look like Alec Baldwin Inter-century anthems based off inner-city tantrums Based off the way we was branded Face it, Jerome get more time than Brandon And at the airport, they check all through my bag And tell me that it's random Is hip-hop just a euphemism for a new religion? The soul music of the slaves that the youth is missing But this is more than just my road to redemption Malcolm West had the whole nation standing at attention. I was looking at my resume, feeling real fresh today They rewrite history, I don't believe in yesterday And what's a Black Beatle anyway, a fuckin' roach? I guess that's why they got me sitting in fuckin' coach."

"Screams from the haters, got a nice ring to it, I guess every superhero need his theme music. ** Power No one man should have all that power The clock’s ticking, I just count the hours I embody every characteristic of the egotistic He knows he's so fucking gifted I just needed time alone with my own thoughts Got treasures in my mind, but couldn't open up my own vault My childlike creativity, purity, and honesty Is honestly being crowded by these grown thoughts Reality is catching up with me Taking my inner child, I'm fighting for custody. Lost in translation with a whole fuckin' nation They say I was the abomination of Obama's nation Well, that's a pretty bad way to start the conversation Now this'll be a beautiful death I'm jumping out the window, letting everything go."

"Restraining order, can't see my daughter Her mother, brother, grandmother hate me in that order Public visitation, we met at Borders Told her she take me back, I'll be more supportive I made mistakes, I bumped my head Them courts sucked me dry, I spent that bread She need her daddy, baby, please Can't let her grow up in that ghetto university."

"I'm living in the future so the present is my past. My presence is a present, kiss my ass."

"I'm so appalled, Spalding, ball Balding Donald Trump taking dollars from y'all."

"Put your hands to the constellations The way you look should be a sin, you're my sensation."

"May the Lord forgive us, may the gods be with us In that magic hour, I seen good Christians Make brash decisions, oh, she do it What happened to religion? Oh, she lose it She putting on her makeup, she casually allure Text message break-ups, the casualty of tour How she gon' wake up and not love me no more? I hit the Jamaican spot, at the bar, take a seat I ordered the jerk, she said you are what you eat You see, I always loved that sense of humor But tonight, you should have seen how quiet the room was."

"'You love me for me', could you be more phony?"

"And I always find, yeah, I always find something wrong You been puttin' up with my shit just way too long I'm so gifted at finding what I don't like the most So I think it's time for us to have a toast Let's have a toast for the douchebags Let's have a toast for the assholes Let's have a toast for the scumbags Every one of them that I know Let's have a toast for the jerk-offs That'll never take work off Baby, I got a plan, Run away fast as you can."

"Never was much of a romantic I could never take the intimacy And I know I did damage 'Cause the look in your eyes is killing me I guess you knew of that advantage 'Cause you could blame me for everything And I don't know how I'ma manage If one day, you just up and leave."

"Have you lost your mind? Tell me when you think we crossed the line No more drugs for me, pussy and religion is all I need Grab my hand and baby, we'll live a hell of a lie I think I fell in love with a pornstar And got married in the bathroom Honeymoon on the dance floor And got divorced by the end of the night That's one hell of a life."

"On the bathroom wall I wrote "I'd rather argue with you than to be with someone else" I took a piss and dismiss it like "fuck it" And I went and found somebody else Fuck arguing and harvesting the feelings Yo, I'd rather be by my fuckin' self 'Til about 2 a.m. and I call back And I hang up and I start to blame myself Somebody help You weren't perfect, but you made life worth it Stick around, some real feelings might surface."

"You're my devil, you're my angel You're my heaven, you're my hell You're my now, you're my forever You're my freedom, you're my jail You're my lies, you're my truth You're my war, you're my truce You're my questions, you're my proof You're my stress and you're my masseuse Run from the lights, run from the night, run for your life."

"Pardon, I'm getting my scream on Enter the kingdom But watch who you bring home They see a black man with a white woman At the top floor they gon' come to kill King Kong Middle America packed in Came to see me in my black skin Number one question they're asking Fuck every question you asking If I don't get ran out by Catholics Here come some conservative Baptists Claiming I'm overreacting."

"Soon as they like you make 'em unlike you Cause kissing people's ass is so unlike you."

"My mama was raised in the era when Clean water was only served to the fairer skin Doing clothes, you would've thought I had help But they wasn't satisfied unless I picked the cotton myself. So go and grab the reporters So I can smash their recorders See, they'll confuse us with some bullshit Like the New World Order Meanwhile the DEA Teamed up with the CCA They tryna lock niggas up They tryna make new slaves See, that's that privately owned prison Get your peace today They prolly all in the Hamptons Bragging 'bout what they made."

""Baby girl, he's a loner, baby girl, he's a loner" Late-night organ donor, after that, he'll disown ya After that he's just hopeless, soul mates become soulless "When it's over it's over," and bitch, I'm back out my coma"

"Time to take it too far now Michael Douglas out the car now. Got the kids-and-the-wife life But can't wake up from the nightlife I'm so scared of my demons I go to sleep with a nightlight My mind move like a Tron bike Pop a wheelie on the Zeitgeist."

"Before the limelight stole ya Remember we were so young When I would hold you Before the blood on the leaves I know there ain't nothin' wrong with me Something strange is happening We could've been somebody Before they call lawyers Before you tried to destroy us How you gon' lie to the lawyer? It's like I don't even know ya I gotta bring it back to the 'nolia All in on that alimony, uh Yeah, yeah, she got you, homie, yeah 'Til death, but do your part Unholy matrimony."

"I know I got a bad reputation 'Walk around, always mad' reputation 'Leave a pretty girl sad' reputation Start a Fight Club, Brad reputation Close your eyes and let the word paint a thousand pictures One good girl is worth a thousand bitches Bound."

"We on an ultralight beam This is a God dream This is everything Deliver us serenity Deliver us peace Deliver us loving We know we need it That's why we need You now Pray for Paris, Pray for the parents."

"Up in the morning, miss you bad Sorry I ain't call you back, same problem my father had All this time, all he had And what he dreamed, all his cash Market crashed, hurt him bad People get divorced for that Dropped some stacks, pops is good Mama passed in Hollywood If you ask, lost my soul Drivin' fast, lost control Off the road, jaw was broke 'Member we all was broke?"

"Seem like the more fame, I only got wilder Hands up, we just doing what the cops taught us I've been outta my mind a long time I've been outta my mind a long time I be saying how I feel at the wrong time Might not come when you want but I'm on time. Name one genius that ain't crazy."

"See, before I let you go One last thing I need to let you know You ain't never seen nothing crazier than This nigga when he off his Lexapro Remember that last time in Mexico? Remember that last time, the episode?"

"Who your real friends? We all came from the bottom I'm always blaming you, but what's sad, you not the problem Real friends I guess I get what I deserve, don't I? Word on the streets is they ain't heard from him I guess I get what I deserve, don't I? Talked down on my name, throwed dirt on him."

"You tried to play nice, everybody just took advantage You left your fridge open, somebody just took a sandwich."

"Any rumor you ever heard about me was true and legendary I done got Lewinskys and paid secretaries For all my niggas with babies by bitches That use they kids as meal tickets Not knowin' the disconnect from the father The next generation will be the real victims Had my life threatened by best friends with selfish intents What I'm supposed to do? Ride around with a bulletproof car and some tints?"

"My wife said, I can't say no to nobody And at this rate, we gon' both die broke Got friends that ask me for money knowing I'm in debt And like my wife said, I still didn't say no People trying to say I'm going crazy on Twitter My friends' best advice was to stay low I guess it's hard to decipher all of the bills Especially when you got family members on payroll The media said it was outlandish spending The media said he's way out of control I can see a thousand years from now in real life Skate on the paradigm and shift it when I feel like Troll conventional thought, don't need to question I know it's antiquated so sometimes I get aggressive Thank God for Jay Electra, he down with the mission Did it with no permission, on our own conditions Most blacks with money have been beaten to submission Yeezy with the big house, did it way different Never listen to Hollywood producers Don't stare at money too long, it's Medusa The ultimate Gemini has survived I wasn't supposed to make it past 25."

"Most black men couldn't balance a checkbook But buy a new car, talking 'bout, 'How my neck look?' Well, it all looks great Four hundred years later, we buyin' our own chains The light is before us brothers, so the devil workin' hard Real family stick together and see through the mirage The smokescreens, perceptions of false reality I've been woken from enlightened man's dream Checkin' Instagram comments to crowdsource my self-esteem Let me not say too much or do too much 'Cause if I'm up way too much, I'm out of touch I'm prayin' a out-of-body experience will happen So the people can see my light, now it's not just rappin' God, I have humbled myself before the court Drop my ego when confidence was my last resort."

"My wife calling, screaming, say we 'bout to lose it all Had to calm her down 'cause she couldn't breathe Told her she could leave me now, but she wouldn't leave Oh, don't bring that up, that's gon' get me sentimental You know I'm sensitive, I got a gentle mental Every time somethin' happen they want me sent to mental We had an incident, but I cover incidentals You want me workin' on my messagin' When I'm thinkin' like George Jetson But soundin' like George Jefferson Then they questionin' my methods then Plus, what was meant to be was meant to be Even if, publicly, I lack the empathy I ain't finna talk about it 'nother four centuries."

"Sometimes I take all the shine Talk like I drank all the wine Years ahead but way behind I'm on one, two, three, four, five No half-truths, just naked minds Caught between space and time This not what they had in mind But maybe someday..."

"Niggas is savage, niggas is monsters Niggas is pimps, niggas is players 'Til niggas have daughters, now they precautious Father, forgive me, I'm scared of the karma 'Cause now I see women as somethin' to nurture Not somethin' to conquer Now she cuttin' class and hangin' with friends You break a glass and say it again She can't comprehend the danger she in If you whoop her ass, she move in with him Then he whoop her ass, you go through it again But how you the devil rebukin' the sin?"

"If you woke, then wake up With Judas, kiss and make up Even with the bitter cup Forgave my brothers and drank up Everything old shall now become new The leaves’ll be green, bearing the fruit Love God and our neighbor, as written in Luke The army of God, and we are the truth."

"Lifelike, this is what your life like, try to live your life right People really know you, push your buttons like typewrite This is like a movie, but it's really very lifelike Every single night, right, every single fight, right? I was looking at the 'Gram and I don't even like likes I was screaming at my dad, he told me, 'It ain't Christ-like' But nobody never tell you when you're being like Christ."

"Nothing worse than a hypocrite Change, he ain't really different He ain't even try to get permission Ask for advice and they dissed him Said I'm finna do a gospel album What have you been hearing from the Christians? They'll be the first one to judge me Make it feel like nobody love me."

"First, it go viral, then they get digital Then they get critical, no, I'm not doin' no interview Mask on my face, you can't see what I'm finna do Had to move away from people that's miserable And this money could never neglect me I pray that my family, they never resent me And she fell in love with me soon as she met me."

"Genius gone clueless, it's a whole lot to risk Alcohol anonymous, who's the busiest loser? Heated by the rumors, read into it too much Fiendin' for some true love, asked Kim, 'What do you love?' Hard to find what the truth is, but the truth was that the truth suck Always seem to do stuff, but this time it was too much."

"I don't want my mind alerting People sayin' tweeting gonna make you die early How 'bout have my heart hurting? Hold it all inside, that could make you die early I be going through things I had to wrote Celebrity drama that only Brad'll know Too many family secrets, somebody passing notes Things I cried about, I find laughable."

"Sittin' by myself, I'm just thinking About all I've been through, I wish I was dreaming Man, it's hard to be an angel when you surrounded by demons I watched so many people leave I see 'em change by the season, that's mama's sеasoning God got you, the devil's watching, he just peeking in I know I madе a promise that I'd never let the reaper in But lately, I've been losin' all my deepest friends And lately, I've been swimmin' on the deepest end It's just drugs, it ain't no hugs, it ain't no love there You been down so much you don't even know what's upstairs Suicidal thoughts got you wonderin' what's up there And if I talk to Christ, can I bring my mother back to life? And if I die tonight, will I see her in the afterlife? But back to reality, where everything's a tragedy."

"Startin' to feel like you ain't been happy for me lately, darling Remember when you used to come around and serenade me But I guess it's gone different, in a different direction, lately Trying to do the right thing with the freedom that you gave me Wrap your arms around with your mercy I give up on doing things my way."

"Here go all your problems again Three, two, one, you're pinned Don't you wish the night would go numb? I've been feelin' low for so long I ain't had a high in so long I been in the dark for so long Night is always darkest 'fore the dawn Gotta make my mark 'fore I'm gone I don't wanna die alone Sadness settin' in again Three, two, one, you're pinned Took your thoughts and penciled 'em in Should've wrote 'em down in pen And maybe they'd come to life."

"Mama, your son in the red hat Had suffered set-backs, had 'shouldn't-have-said-thats' Had made everyone mad Give 'em enough of they own rope to hang 'em with The paparazzi never really got what my angle is They treat my married life like some type of entanglement."

"You know why my spirit's callin' Darkness can't take light from me Haven't you gone far enough? Sacrificed the ones you love Gave up on your sanity Like some twisted fantasy What would I say to everything? Your actions cost everything."

"When I had my accident, I found out at that moment nothing in life is promised except death."

"If you have the opportunity to play this game called life, you need to appreciate every moment. A lot of people don't appreciate their moment until it's passed. I know everybody asked me the question, they wanted to know, 'What, Kan, I know he's gonna wild out, I know he's gonna do something crazy.' Everybody wanted to know what I would do, if I didn't win... I guess we'll never know!"

"I hate the way they portray us in the media. You see a black family, it says, 'They're looting.' You see a white family, it says, 'They're looking for food.' George Bush doesn't care about black people."

"Yo, Taylor, I'm really happy for you, I'ma let you finish, but Beyoncé had one of the best videos of all time! One of the best videos of all time!"

"Know your worth! People always act like they're doing more for you than you're doing for them. Ask yourself this question, "Why would they do that?" Obviously, you bring something to the table for them to even do business with you."

"Life is 5% what happens and 95% how you react!"

"Would you believe in what you believe in if you were the only one who believed it?"

"I refuse to accept other people's ideas of happiness for me. As if there's a "one size fits all" standard for happiness"

"I hate when I'm on a flight and I wake up with a water bottle next to me like oh great now I gotta be responsible for this water bottle"

"I am Warhol. I am the number 1 most impactful artist of our generation. I am Shakespeare in the flesh. Walt Disney. Nike. Google. The music and the clothing are just as important. That's what makes you hip hop. You show people that you're hip hop by what you wear. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S78tT_YxF_c You ain't got the answers Sway! [In response to Calloway suggesting he start a clothing company on his own"

"Man, let me tell you something about George Bush and oil money and Obama and no money. People want to say Obama can't make these moves or he's not executing. That's because he ain't got those connections. Black people don't have the same level of connections as Jewish people. Black people don't have the same connections as oil people."

"When I was trying to serve multiple gods it drove me crazy. That's like the greatest chef in the world trying to make a seven-course meal and serve it at eight different houses."

"You know, he made these peace treaties,[...] I just think it was to make money. I just think that that’s what they’re about is making money. I don’t think that they have the ability to make anything on their own. I think they’re born into money, and it makes me feel like they weren’t serving my boy Trump the way they could’ve."

"This ain’t a game. Ima use you as an example to show the Jewish people that told you to call me that no one can threaten or influence me. I told you this was war. Now gone get you some business."

"I'm a bit sleepy tonight but when I wake up I'm going death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can't be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also You guys have toyed with me and tried to black ball anyone whoever opposes your agenda"

"I see good things about Hitler also. I love everyone. Jewish people are not going to tell me you can love us, and you can love what we’re doing to you with the contracts, and you can love what we’re pushing with the pornography. But this guy that invented highways, invented the very microphone that I use as a musician, you can’t say out loud that this person ever did anything good, and I’m done with that."

"I like Hitler."

"They did good things too, we've got to stop dissing the Nazis all the time."

"I don't like the word evil next to Nazis. I love Jewish people, but I also love Nazis."

"He didn’t kill six million Jews. That's just factually incorrect. The Holocaust is not what happened. Let's look at the facts of that. Hitler has a lot of redeeming qualities."

"I'm done with the classifications. Every human being has something of value that they brought to the table. Especially Hitler."

"I'm never apologizing for my Jewish comments"

"I'm a Nazi"

"I love Hitler now what bitches"

"Some of my best friends are Jewish and I don't trust any of them"

"Elon stole my Nazi swag at the inauguration"

"Donald Trump, please free my brother Puff"

"Im [sic] never apologizing for my Jewish comments I can [say] whatever the fuck I wanna say forever [where's] my fucking apology for freezing my accounts suck my dick [how's] that for an apology"

"Hitler was sooooo fresh"

"call me Yaydolf Yitler"

"Adam Sandler Thank you for the love"

"After further reflection I've come to the realization that I'm not a Nazi"

"The holiest day in Judaism was last week. Words matter. A threat to Jewish people ended once in a genocide. Your words hurt and incite violence [...] You are a father. Please stop."

"He is opening Donda Academy, a vocational school in Chatsworth, Los Angeles, and plans to build a series of shelters — which he calls “Dondasteries” — to provide safe spaces for those in need."

"With Kanye, the arrogant thing always comes up, but think about what that does for your ability to make art. He doesn't even question himself as to whether he can do it or not. He does it fast and good, and he doesn't stop on the side of the road to wonder if he can do it."

"The one thing I fear for [West] the most is if you keep talking about being the greatest, people eventually are going to want to watch you fail. Those who crash and burn are far more interesting to watch than those who actually succeed."

"I've met with Kanye [...] The thing about hip-hop today is it's smart, it's insightful, and the way that [West] can communicate a complex message in a very short space is remarkable."

"He's a jackass."

"I like Kanye, He's a Chicago guy. Smart. He's very talented. He is a jackass, but he's talented."

"@KanyeWest asked permission to sample a section of a 1983 live performance of “Iron Man” from the US Festival without vocals and was refused permission because he is an antisemite and has caused untold heartache to many. He went ahead and used the sample anyway at his album listening party last night. I want no association with this man!"

"We can't stop a deranged bigot from spewing hate filled, ignorant bile ... but we CAN stop giving him a megaphone, Mr. Musk. Kanye West has 32.7 million followers on your platform, X. That's twice as many people than the number of Jews in existence. His sick hate speech results in REAL LIFE violence against Jews. I don't know what's worse, the fact that he identifies as a Nazi (which implies he wants to exterminate ALL marginalized communities including his own) or the fact that there is not sufficient OUTRAGE to remove and ban him from all social media at this point. Silence is complicity."

"Kanye threatened the Jews yesterday on twitter and it’s not even trending. Why do mostly only Jews speak up against Jewish hate? The silence is so loud"

"During Kanye West’s spectacular plummet last fall, my friends and I would often marvel at the latest outrageous thing he’d said. And we would send around clips of what were, in hindsight, terribly suspect comments he’d previously made. One such example was “I am not a fan of books,” which Ye told an interviewer upon the publication of his own book, Thank You and You’re Welcome. “I am a proud non-reader of books,” he continued. That statement strikes me as one of the more disturbing things he’s ever said. Ye’s patently reprehensible anti-Semitic tirades rightly drew the world’s scorn. But his anti-book stance is disturbing because it says something about not only Ye’s character but the smugly solipsistic tenor of this cultural moment. We have never before had access to so many perspectives, ideas, and information. Much of it is fleetingly interesting but ultimately inconsequential—not to be confused with expertise, let alone wisdom. This much is widely understood and discussed. The ease with which we can know things and communicate them to one another, as well as launder success in one realm into pseudo-authority in countless others, has combined with a traditional American tendency toward anti-intellectualism and celebrity worship. Toss in a decades-long decline in the humanities, and we get our superficial culture in which even the elite will openly disparage as pointless our main repositories for the very best that has been thought."

"This is classic anti-Semitism. There it goes again, the age-old canard that Jews are all-powerful and control the levers of power in government. As a celebrity with a wide following, Kanye West should know better. We hope that he will take responsibility for his words, understand why they are so offensive, and apologize to those he has offended."

"[H]urtful, offensive and wrong. They perpetuate stereotypes that have been the basis for discrimination and violence against Jews for thousands of years. Words like this tear at the fabric of the Black-Jewish relationship. The Black and Jewish communities must stand together through incidents like this to make clear that trafficking in hateful stereotypes is unacceptable — and that the words of one entertainer do not reflect the views of an entire community."

"In the past week, Ye has spread some of the most vile and age-old stereotypes about Jews to his hundreds of millions of followers. There should be no place for this kind of hate in our public discourse. We support every entertainer’s right to free speech, but no one has a free pass to target and demonize a minority group with such malice. We are gravely concerned about the impact of Ye’s statements — and how they will affect his fans, particularly young people. At the same time, we hope this can be a moment that ultimately creates better awareness about the dangers of antisemitism for Ye, his fans, and other entertainers. We remain open to dialogue with him about how harmful and fallacious his comments are."

"Living is a pretty grim joke, but a joke just the same. The entire function of man is to survive. The outermost limit of endeavour is creative work. Anything less is too close to simple survival until death happens along. So I am engaged in striving to maintain equilibrium sufficient to at least realize survival in a way to astound the gods. I turned the thing up so it's up to me to survive in a big way . . . Foolishly perhaps, but determined none the less, I have high hopes of smashing my name into history so violently that it will take a legendary form even if all books are destroyed."

"God was feeling sardonic the day He created the Universe. So it's rather up to at least one man every few centuries to pop up and come just as close to making him swallow his laughter as possible."

"You don't get rich writing science fiction. If you want to get rich, you start a religion."

"Benzedrine often helps a case run."

"Scientology is the only specific (cure) for radiation (atomic bomb) burns."

"It was my responsibility that this world got itself an atom bomb, because there were only a handful of nuclear physicists in the thirties — only a handful. And we were all beating the desk and saying "How wonderful it will be if we discover atomic fission.""

"You are only three or four hours from taking your glasses off for keeps."

"THE ONLY WAY YOU CAN CONTROL PEOPLE IS TO LIE TO THEM. You can write that down in your book in great big letters. The only way you can control anybody is to lie to them."

"Rate of change is this mathematics known as Calculus. … Now I hope you understand this, because I've never been able to make head nor tail of it. It must be some sort of a Black Magic operation, started out by the Luce cult — some immoral people who are operating up in New York City, Rockefeller Plaza — been thoroughly condemned by the whole society. Anyway, their rate-of-change theory — I've never seen any use for that mathematics, by the way — I love that mathematics, because it — I asked an engineer, one time, who was in his 6th year of engineering, if he'd ever used Calculus, and he told me yeah, once, once I did, he said. When did you use it? And he said I used it once. Let me see, what did you use it on? Oh yeah. Something on the rate-of-change of steam particles in boilers. And then we went out and tested it and found the answer was wrong."

"This is useful knowledge. With it the blind again see, the lame walk, the ill recover, the insane become sane and the sane become saner. By its use the thousand abilities Man has sought to recover become his once more."

"Of all the ills of man which can be successfully processed by Scientology, arthritis ranks near the top. In skilled hands, this ailment, though misunderstood and dreaded in the past, already has begun to become history. Twenty-five hours of Scientology by an auditor who fairly understands how to process arthritis can be said to produce an invariable alleviation of the condition. Some cases, even severe ones, have responded in as little as two hours of processing, according to reports from auditors in the field."

"Here on Earth there was undoubtedly a Christ. One of the reasons he swept in so suddenly and he would go forward so hard is, he had a good assist in back of him in terms of an implant."

"You can get a much better fee — I tell you as auditors quite frankly — it's much easier to get a great deal of money out of somebody who's on a down spiral into becoming MEST than it is to get money out of somebody who is going on an up spiral toward becoming theta."

""The creation of Dianetics is a milestone for Man comparable to his discovery of fire and superior to his inventions of the wheel and the arch." Opening line."

"A large proportion of allegedly feeble-minded children are actually attempted abortion cases . . . However many billions America spends yearly on institutions for the insane and jails for the criminals are spent primarily because of attempted abortions done by some sex-blocked mother to whom children are a curse, not a blessing of God . . . All these things are scientific facts, tested and rechecked and tested again."

"Arthritis vanishes, myopia gets better, heart illness decreases, asthma disappears, stomachs function properly and the whole catalog of illnesses goes away and stays away."

"Dianetics is not in any way covered by legislation anywhere, for no law can prevent one man sitting down and telling another man his troubles, and if anyone wants a monopoly on dianetics, be assured that he wants it for reasons which have to do not with dianetics but with profit."

"There is no national problem in the world today, which cannot be resolved by reason alone."

"In any event, any person from 2.0 down on the Tone Scale should not have, in any thinking society, any civil rights of any kind, because by abusing those rights he brings into being arduous and strenuous laws which are oppressive to those who need no such restraints."

"Unfortunately, it is all too often true that suppressors to a creative action must be removed before construction and creation takes place. Any person very high on the Tone Scale may level destruction toward a suppressor."

"There are only two answers for the handling of people from 2.0 down on the Tone Scale, neither one of which has anything to do with reasoning with them or listening to their justification of their acts. The first is to raise them on the Tone Scale by un-enturbulating some of their theta by any one of the three valid processes. The other is to dispose of them quietly and without sorrow."

"The sudden and abrupt deletion of all individuals occupying the lower bands of the Tone Scale from the social order would result in an almost instant rise in the cultural tone and would interrupt the dwindling spiral into which any society may have entered."

"A Venezuelan dictator once decided to stop leprosy. He saw that most lepers in his country were also beggars. By the simple expedient of collecting and destroying all the beggars in Venezuela an end was put to leprosy in that country."

"A culture is only as great as its dreams, and its dreams are dreamed by artists."

"Ideas and not battles mark the forward progress of mankind. Individuals, and not masses, form the culture of the race."

"Unethical conduct is actually the conduct of destruction and fear; lies are told because one is afraid of the consequences should one tell the truth; thus, the liar is inevitably a coward, the coward is inevitably a liar."

"No civilization can progress to the stability of continuous survival without certain and sure command of knowledge such as that contained in Dianetics. For Dianetics, skillfully used, can do exactly what it claims. It can, in the realm of the individual, prevent or alleviate insanity, neurosis, compulsions and obsessions and it can bring about physical well-being, removing the basic cause of some 70% of man's illnesses. It can, in the field of the family, bring about better accord and harmony. It can, in the field of nations or smaller groups such as those of industry, improve management to a point where these pitifully inadequate ideologies, for which men fight and die with such frightening earnestness, can be laid aside in favor of a workable technology."

"Leukemia is evidently psychosomatic in origin and at least eight cases of leukemia had been treated successfully by Dianetics after medicine had traditionally given up. The source of leukemia has been reported to be an engram containing the phrase 'It turns my blood to water.'"

"there is no war not based on lies, there is no infamy alive without its kindred kin, deceit."

"You are a spirit, then, you Man, and not a Man at all. You are a spirit and you dwell within the guts of mortal beast."

"You are a spirit, then a god, full capable of making space and energy and time and all things well. And there you crouch, forgotten to yourself and hidden from the eyes of all pretending there to be a beast that walks and eats and dies."

"Scientology … is not a religion."

"Never regret yesterday. Life is in you today, and you make your tomorrow."

"The one impulse in man which cannot be erased is his impulse toward freedom, his impulse toward sanity, toward higher levels of attainment in all of his endeavors."

"The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly."

"There are conditions worse than being unable to see, and that is imagining one sees."

"When we need somebody haunted we investigate … When we investigate we do so noisily always."

"People attack Scientology, I never forget it, always even the score. People attack auditors, or staff, or organizations, or me. I never forget until the slate is clear."

"So we listen. We add up associations of people with people. When a push against Scientology starts somewhere, we go over the people involved and weed them out. Push vanishes."

"Not smoking enough will cause lung cancer! If anybody is getting a cancerous activity in the lung, the probabilities are that it's radiation dosage coupled with the fact that he smokes. And what it does is start to run out the radiation dosage, don't you see."

"The subject of philosophy is very ancient. The word means: "The love, study or pursuit of wisdom, or of knowledge of things and their causes, whether theoretical or practical." All we know of science or of religion comes from philosophy. It lies behind and above all other knowledge we have or use."

"I have lived no cloistered life and hold in contempt the wise man who has not lived and the scholar who will not share. There have been many wiser men than I, but few have traveled as much road. I have seen life from the top down and the bottom up. I know how it looks both ways. And I know there is wisdom and that there is hope."

"A psychiatrist today has the power to (1) take a fancy to a woman (2) lead her to take wild treatment as a joke (3) drug and shock her to temporary insanity (4) incarnate her (5) use her sexually (6) sterilize her to prevent conception (7) kill her by a brain operation to prevent disclosure. And all with no fear of reprisal. Yet it is rape and murder… We want at least one bad mark on every psychiatrist in England, a murder, an assault, or a rape or more than one… This is Project Psychiatry. We will remove them."

"It is all very well to sit back and hope for "the best in this best of all possible worlds" but it's the course of personal and national suicide. Unless there is a vast alteration in man's civilization as it stumbles along today, man will not be here very long and none of us. Times must change."

"Man is sick and nations have gone mad. You would not even tolerate for one moment the conduct in an individual that is commonplace in the acts of some nations. You would lock up such a person."

"In all the broad Universe there is no other hope for Man than ourselves."

"I'm drinking lots of rum and popping pinks and greys."

"Certainty, not data, is knowledge."

"Oh yes! The one man in the world who never believes he's mad is the madman."

"Anyway, Everyman is then shown to have been crucified so don't think that it's an accident that this crucifixion, they found out that this applied. Somebody somewhere on this planet, back about 600 BC, found some pieces of R6, and I don't know how they found it, either by watching madmen or something, but since that time they have used it and it became what is known as Christianity. The man on the Cross. There was no Christ. But the man on the cross is shown as Everyman. So of course each person seeing a crucified man, has an immediate feeling of sympathy for this man. Therefore you get many PCs who says they are Christ. Now, there's two reasons for that, one is the Roman Empire was prone to crucify people, so a person can have been crucified, but in R6 he is shown as crucified."

"Our organizations are friendly. They are only here to help you."

"I set out to try to help my fellow man and to do what little I could to make the world a better place."

"Advanced Courses are the most valuable service on the planet. Life insurance, houses, cars, stocks, bonds, college savings, all are transitory and impermanent … There is nothing to compare with Advanced Courses. They are infinitely valuable and transcend time itself."

"Despite the amount of suffering, pain, misery, sorrow and travail which can exist in life, the reason for existence is the same reason as one has to play a game — interest, contest, activity and possession. The truth of this assertion is established by an observation of the elements of games and then applying these elements to life itself."

"Scientology is used to increase spiritual freedom, intelligence, ability and to produce immortality."

"That stupid fucking kid! That stupid fucking kid! Look what he's done to me!"

"Man," said Terl, "is an endangered species."

"Scientology means scio, knowing in the fullest sense of the word, and logos, study. In itself the word means knowing how to know. Scientology is a 'route,' a way, rather than a dissertation or assertive body of knowledge. Through its drills and studies one may find the truth for himself. The technology is therefore not expounded as something to believe, but something to do."

"Happiness and strength endure only in the absence of hate. To hate alone is the road to disaster. To love is the road to strength. To love in spite of all is the secret of greatness. And may very well be the greatest secret in this universe."

"To be happy, one only must be able to confront, which is to say, experience, those things that are. Unhappiness is only this: the inability to confront that which is."

"On the day when we can fully trust each other, there will be peace on Earth."

"You won't always be here. But before you go, whisper this to your sons and their sons "The work was free. Keep it so.""

"Freedom is for honest people. No man who is not himself honest can be free — he is in his own trap."

"All mankind lives and each man strives by codes of conduct mutually agreed. Perhaps these codes are good, perhaps they're bad, it's only evident they're codes. Mores bind the race. Co-action then occurs. Thought and motion in accord. A oneness then of purpose and survival so results. But now against that code there is transgression. And so because the code was held, whatever code it was, and man sought comfort in man's company, he held back his deed and so entered then the bourne in which no being laughs or has a freedom in his heart."

"Now, get this as a technical fact, not a hopeful idea. Every time we have investigated the background of a critic of Scientology, we have found crimes for which that person or group could be imprisoned under existing law. We do not find critics of Scientology who do not have criminal pasts."

"The alleviation of the condition of insanity has also been accomplished now…"

"There's only one remedy for crime — get rid of the psychs! They are causing it!"

"If attacked on some vulnerable point by anyone or anything or any organization, always find or manufacture enough threat against them to cause them to sue for peace."

"We're playing for blood, the stake is EARTH."

"There is no more ethical group on this planet than ourselves."

"When somebody enrolls, consider he or she has joined up for the duration of the universe — never permit an "open-minded" approach... If they enrolled, they're aboard, and if they're aboard they're here on the same terms as the rest of us — win or die in the attempt. Never let them be half minded about being Scientologists. … When Mrs. Pattycake comes to us to be taught, turn that wandering doubt in her eye into a fixed, dedicated glare. … The proper instruction attitude is, "We'd rather have you dead than incapable.""

"We're not playing some minor game in Scientology. It isn't cute or something to do for lack of something better. The whole agonized future of this planet, every Man, Woman and Child on it, and your own destiny for the next endless trillions of years depend on what you do here and now with and in Scientology."

"A political system seeking to function amongst ignorant, illiterate and barbaric people could have marvelous principles but could only succeed in being ignorant, illiterate and barbaric unless one addressed the people one by one and cured the ignorance, illiteracy and barbarism of each citizen."

"A truly Suppressive Person or group has no rights of any kind and actions taken against them are not punishable."

"This is the correct procedure: Spot who is attacking us. Start investigating them promptly for felonies or worse using our own professionals, not outside agencies. Double curve our reply by saying we welcome an investigation of them. Start feeding lurid, blood sex crime actual evidence on the attackers to the press. Don't ever tamely submit to an investigation of us. Make it rough, rough on attackers all the way."

"When you move off a point of power, pay all your obligations on the nail, empower all your friends completely and move off with your pockets full of artillery, potential blackmail on every erstwhile rival, unlimited funds in your private account and the addresses of experienced assassins and go live in Bulgravia and bribe the police."

"ENEMY: SP Order. Fair game. May be deprived of property or injured by any means by any Scientologist without any discipline of the Scientologist. May be tricked, sued or lied to or destroyed."

"The practice of declaring people FAIR GAME will cease. FAIR GAME may not appear on any Ethics Order. It causes bad public relations. This P/L does not cancel any policy on the treatment or handling of an SP."

"The names and connections, at this time, of the bitterly opposing enemy are: 1. Psychiatry and psychology (not medicine). 2. The heads of news media who are also directors of psychiatric front groups. 3. A few key political figures in the fields of "mental health" and education. 4. A decline of monetary stability caused by the current planning of bankers who are also directors of psychiatric front organizations [that] would make us unable to function."

""Psychiatry" and "psychiatrist" are easily redefined to mean "an anti-social enemy of the people". This takes the kill crazy psychiatrist off the preferred list of professions … The redefinition of words is done by associating different emotions and symbols with the word than were intended...Scientologists are redefining "doctor", "Psychiatry" and "psychology" to mean "undesirable antisocial elements"...The way to redefine a word is to get the new definition repeated as often as possible. Thus it is necessary to redefine medicine, psychiatry and psychology downward and define Dianetics and Scientology upwards. This, so far as words are concerned, is the public opinion battle for belief in your definitions, and not those of the opposition. A consistent, repeated effort is the key to any success with this technique of propaganda."

"MAKE MONEY. MAKE MORE MONEY. MAKE OTHER PEOPLE PRODUCE SO AS TO MAKE MORE MONEY."

"There is a correlation between the creative and the screwball. So we must suffer the screwball gladly."

"In addition to violating and abusing its own members' civil rights, the organization [Scientology] over the years with its "Fair Game" doctrine has harassed and abused those persons not in the Church whom it perceives as enemies. The organization clearly is schizophrenic and paranoid, and the bizarre combination seems to be a reflection of its founder LRH [L. Ron Hubbard]. The evidence portrays a man who has been virtually a pathological liar when it comes to his history, background, and achievements. The writings and documents in evidence additionally reflect his egoism, greed, avarice, lust for power, and vindictiveness and aggressiveness against persons perceived by him to be disloyal or hostile. At the same time it appears that he is charismatic and highly capable of motivating, organizing, controlling, manipulating, and inspiring his adherents."

"People mistake L. Ron Hubbard and his Scientology. They see the apparency, and not the actuality. By design. Scientology does not work as stated; but as intended. As intended by its creator L Ron Hubbard. To keep the Doorway open. To remain in the realm of the Great Beast. To feed the hunger of the Will. His Will. When he emptied the purse of man and the heart of women; it seeks onward and outward. Appetite. Forever appetite. Scientology is the snare. The passion flower. the Cloak of Lights. The glow of power. A power always wanting. Always needing. The Will never satisfied."

"He is a fraud and has always been a fraud. … My father has always used the confidential information extracted from people during [auditing] to intimidate, threaten and coerce them to do what he wanted, which often meant getting them to give him money. My father routinely used false threats and [information from confessionals] particularly about crimes people had committed to extort money from them. … My father has always held out Scientology and auditing to be based purely on science and not on religious "belief" or faith. We regularly promised and distributed publications with "scientific guarantees". This was and has always been common practice. My father and I created a "religious front" only for tax purposes and legal protection 'from fraud Claims'. We almost always told nearly everyone that Scientology was really science, not a religion, but that the religious front was created to deal with the government."

"Scientology is bullshit! Man, I was there the night L. Ron Hubbard invented it, for Christ's sakes! … We were sitting around one night … who else was there? Alfred Bester, and Cyril Kornbluth, and Lester del Rey, and Ron Hubbard, who was making a penny a word, and had been for years. And he said "This bullshit's got to stop!" He says, "I gotta get money." He says, "I want to get rich". And somebody said, "why don't you invent a new religion? They're always big." We were clowning! You know, "Become Elmer Gantry! You'll make a fortune!" He says, "I'm going to do it.""

"He was just Ron and I kinda liked him, mostly because he wrote well, and I never felt he took all that Scientology nonsense seriously but knew how to make a good buck, and he liked me, and... well, he was a friend who died."

"In my opinion Hubbard was an evil man and a willfully evil man. He knew what he was doing."

"It's too bad there isn't a 20th Century Charles Dickens to write about the terrible destruction of these 20th Century Fagins who make themselves rich while they destroy the psyche of so many."

"The tug-of-war between Scientologists and anti-Scientologists over Hubbard’s legacy has created two swollen archetypes: the most important person who ever lived and the world’s greatest con man. Hubbard was certainly grandiose, but to label him merely a fraud is to ignore the complexity of his character."

"Alanis Morissette and I actually used to date. I especially liked it when we went to the movies."

"That's something the kids should know about. Reading is a gateway to witchcraft and lesbianism."

"I wrote "Eat It" because I wanted to buy a banana boat for Christmas. It worked."

"I have very mixed feelings about [Napster]. On one hand, I'm concerned that the rampant downloading of my copyright-protected material over the Internet is severely eating into my album sales and having a decidedly adverse effect on my career. On the other hand, I can get all the Metallica songs I want for FREE! WOW!!!!!"

"What kind of bananas do you have working at newspapers in Austin that would base an entire review of an artist's performance on whether or not they had a good seat?"

"I think my chances of getting into the Rock 'N' Roll Hall Of Fame are about as good as Milli Vanilli's."

"Right now I'm listening to a lot of Top 40 music, because THAT'S MY JOB."

"Many years ago I found out something about hamburgers that really grossed me out. You may not know this, so I hope I don't make you sick, but it turns out hamburgers are actually made out of dead cows. I am not making this up. Needless to say, as soon as I discovered that, I gave up meat entirely."

"If money can't buy happiness, I guess I'll have to rent it."

"My brothers and sisters all hated me 'cause I was an only child."

"I'll never forget the first thing she said to me, she said: "Hey - you've got weasels on your face." Right then I knew it was true love."

"Look If you had one shot to sit on your lazy butt and watch all the TV you ever wanted until your brain turned to mush Would you go for it? or just let it slip? Yo"

"Shoppin' online for deals on some writable media I edit Wikipedia"

"I'm nerdy in the extreme Whiter than sour cream"

"I sued Taco Bell 'Cause I ate half a million Chalupas And I got fat! I sued Panasonic They never said I shouldn't use their microwave To dry off my cat!"

"Oh, you don't wanna mess with the R-I-double-A They'll sue you if you burn that CD-R It doesn't matter if you're a grandma, or a seven-year-old girl They'll treat you like the evil, hard-bitten, criminal scum you are"

"Never had a date That you couldn't inflate"

"We only torture the folks we don't like You're probably gonna be okay."

"Rushin' Lullaby."

"[T]he main thing a musician would like to do is to give a picture to the listener of the many wonderful things he knows of and senses in the universe. That's what music is to me—it's just another way of saying this is a big, beautiful universe we live in, that's been given to us, and here's an example of just how magnificent and encompassing it is. That's what I would like to do. I think that's one of the greatest things you can do in life, and we all try to do it in some way. The musician's is through his music."

"Keep a thing happenin' all throughout."

"Q: What would you like to be in 10 years? A: I'd like to be a saint."

"I thought about this question. I answered it as best I could [at the press conference]. I felt I didn't tell [the reporter] what I really wanted to say. He thought I was Christian. And I am by birth; my parents were and my early teachings were Christian. But as I look upon the world, I feel all men know the truth. If a man was a Christian, he could know the truth and he could not. The truth itself does not have any name on it. And each man has to find it for himself, I think."

"My goal is to live the truly religious life and express it in my music. If you live it, when you play there's no problem because the music is just part of the whole thing. To be a musician is really something. It goes very, very deep. My music is the spiritual expression of what I am—my faith, my knowledge, my being."

"John [Coltrane] was like a visitor to this planet. He came in peace and he left in peace; but during his time here, he kept trying to reach new levels of awareness, of peace, of spirituality. That's why I regard the music he played as spiritual music — John's way of getting closer and closer to the Creator."

"I was playing this concert, and when I finished a solo, I backed offstage. There was Coltrane with the lights behind him, beatified. He held out his arms and took me in and I wept like a child. I'd been through so much, and held so much in, but I didn't cry until Coltrane told me it was alright."

"I think the most interesting thing about Coltrane, besides his tone and his sense of improvisation, was his deep spiritual centre. You really felt his relationship with God in his playing."

"...you pick up the saxophone again, I suppose it's like writing poetry, you are picking up the history of that. Playing saxophone is like honoring a succession of myths. I never thought of this before but: the myth of saxophone and here comes Billie Holiday and there's Coltrane. I love his work dearly, especially "A Love Supreme." That song has fed me. And all of that becomes. When you play you're a part of that, you have to recognize those people."

"[W]hen I was with him, he was as straight as a pin, but he had this sugar addiction and he loved these butter rum lifesavers. So he'd be pop—when he didn't have the horn in his mouth, he would be popping these lifesavers in, which satisfied his sugar craving, I guess. But he always had that... his breath always smelled of butter rum lifesavers."

"Much of what the jazz-rock and fusion players would do in the 70s used Coltrane's modal and rhythmic frameworks as a model."

"You know, John Coltrane has been sort of a god to me. Seems like, in a way, he didn't get the inspiration out of other musicians. He had it. When you hear a cat do a thing like that, you got to go along with him. I think I heard Coltrane before I really got close to Miles [Davis]. Miles had a tricky way of playing his horn that I didn't understand as much as I did Coltrane. I really didn't understand what Coltrane was doing, but it was so exciting the thing that he was doing..."

"Eventually I became a tad compulsive about hearing certain songs. At first it was a handful of jazz classics-Miles Davis's "Freddie Freeloader," John Coltrane's "My Favorite Things," Frank Sinatra's "Luck Be a Lady.""

"A titanic force behind tenor and soprano saxophones during his four decades on this planet, John Coltrane was relentless in his pursuit as musician. Constantly crafting his technique, he supposedly practiced sometimes ten to twelve hours a day, including after gigs or between sets. While there's some great material on his early Prestige recordings, his watershed album Giant Steps for Atlantic was monumental. His Impulse! records with his classic quartet of McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones are some of finest discs he released, including A Love Supreme and Crescent. Coltrane influenced countless musicians and his presence is even heard in younger players today."

"In short, [Coltrane's] tone is beautiful because it is functional. In other words, it is always involved in saying something. You can't separate the means that a man uses to say something from what he ultimately says. Technique is not separated from its content in a great artist."

"I mostly like things that have causes more than effects, and this seemed to be a tune that is mostly effects. I don't get the cause clearly."

"Let's play the music and not the background!"

"I wasn't so interested in being paid. I wanted to be heard. That's why I'm broke."

"The only thing my mother would say about my music—I'd say, "Mom, listen to this," and she'd say, "Junior, I know who you are.""

"Jazz is the only music in which the same note can be played nigth after night but differently each time."

"When people like and John Lewis, whose musicianship I respect, back and support this so openly and fervently, I don't know what to think. I just can't figure it out. From the very first note it's miserably out of tune. [...] I should like to revise one rating. After hearing "Embraceable You" by the Ornette Coleman group, I'd like to raise the rating on ' "Midnight Sun Never Sets" to 12!"

"When asked to play a 12-bar blues, Ornette Coleman fingered his plastic saxophone and played nothing...he's felt more nothing than you or I know."

"I like Ornette's approach to writing. I wish I could see more of a link between the writing and the solos. It's like a building without any foundation and something's got to keep it up in the air. Even an atom-powered submarine has to go back to home base sometimes ... You've got to know where home is. You've got to acknowledge that somewhere."

"In my estimation a very important date, along with some of Ornette's earlier dates. It was very important insofar as the direction of the music; jazz, specifically the avant-garde ... Ornette inspired me to move from the canal-like narrow-mindedness of the '40s through the later '50s, to the later Grand Canyon-like harmonic awareness of the '60s ... I think he might have had some bearing on Newk Rollins and the impeccable John Coltrane."

"Whichever alto player it was, I wish he would play in tune. He's got good ideas, but it would help to get them across a little more, you know, if ... unless that's considered to be a little bit more freedom—if you can take liberties with the intonation like that. if that's liberty, boy, they're making an ass out of Abraham Lincoln! I think it would be a good idea for everybody to just leave Ornette alone for about five years and let him get himself together rather than subject him to all the controversail ends of it ... he's searching and he should at least have the liberty to do it in peace."

"There's two driving forces for every jazz player—the playing and the writing ... Ornette's writing was a little bit ahead of his playing when this record was made. He has a wonderful sense of humor, and the compositions are very interesting. But I don't think he plays his compositions as well as he wrote them."

"I'm in favor of Ornette and many of the things he has done ... he does possess the basic elements that go to make up a jazz artist ... a rhythmic drive ... qualities you can find in everybody since Louis Armstrong—all the good guys ... I can still see in his figures a certain quality that was exemplified by Bird. Everybody says Ornette's playing sounds weird or so forth. But the basic jazz essentials, as I said ... Ornette has—the drive and the rhythm. Rhythm is the most necessary part, the prerequisite for the jazz musician—the positive element. But, of course, harmony is the negative through which the positive must exert itself."

"His musical inspiration operates in a world uncluttered by conventional bar lines, conventional chord changes, and conventional ways of blowing or fingering a saxophone. Such practical 'limitations' did not even have to be overcome in his music; they somehow never existed for him. Despite this--or more accurately, because of this--his playing has a deep inner logic. Not an obvious surface logic, it is based on subtleties of reaction, subtleties of timing and color that are, I think, quite new to jazz--at least they have never appeared in so pure and direct a form."

"With his 1959 Atlantic debut, The Shape of Jazz to Come, alto player Ornette Coleman helped usher in free jazz and avant-garde jazz. Recording without piano helped liberate the songs of a recognizable chord structure and his harmolodics philosophy sought to to free musical compositions from any tonal center. Coleman also used somewhat inventive instrumentation, such as the double quartet (one quartet on each side of the stereo channel), on albums like Free Jazz. The 2006 live album Sound Grammar is among the 83-year-old saxophonist's better recent efforts."

"Ladies don't love shit. Ladies just act like they love. You understand what I'm sayin'? It's an act when it comes to Ol Dirty Bastard. They ACT like they love Ol Dirty - ladies don't love Ol Dirty Bastard because … Ol Dirty Bastard is busy lovin' them. They might like Ol Dirty Bastard, know what I'm sayin? They might listen to his music or something, but really they don't pay no mind. They pay nothing no mind, nothing is paid a mind to, really, on this earth. It's just living, and dying. The world is a big ball of fire and it's just burning with no feeling."

"I'm into all assholes. I like it because it's tinier than a pussyhole. It's so tiny, it's tinier than a clitoris. When i get the feeling of licking a york peppermint patty, it's a sensation."

"Everyday, like probably three times a day, I'd jerk my dick off so much that the prisoners would say yo Ol' Dirty chill the fuck out. Every girl I saw on T.V., her ass looked funny to me, and i just kept jerkin my dick off, every fucking day and night."

"Yeah nigga, fart that shit. [referring to a vulgar method of lighting marijuana]"

"Do I let my children listen to my music?' Of course I do. Shoot, the worst curse is a lie."

"When it comes to children, Wu-Tang is for the children."

"First things first man you're fucking with the worst I'll be sticking pins in your head like a fucking nurse I'll attack any nigga who's slack in his mack Come fully packed with a fat rugged stackWhile you sleep I be the God on point, with Scottie Pippen As I, jump on stage, flip rip a show Strip and rip a hoe, wayyy like Bo Jackson while I'm still taxin maxin Relaxin sittin back sellin good tracks and Again and again when I rock the jam"

"You know God damn well I don't smoke this shit Meth *coughing* Know damn well I don't smoke this sheyit Know damn well!"

"What y'all thought y'all wasn't gon' see me? I'm the Osiris of this shit!""

"Oh baby I dedicate this to all the pretty girls All the pretty girls Its on [echo] All the pretty girls, in the world And the ugly girls too Cause to me your pretty anyways babyI don't have no trouble with you fucking me But I have a little problem wit you not fucking me"

"I'm immune to all viruses I get the cocaine it cleans out my sinuses Kill all the government microchips in my body I'm the paranoid nigga at your party I kill all my enemies at birth! Shut the fuck up! Bitch and let my slide my hands up your skirt"

"Run-uhhn-uuhhn-uhhn, nominated at awards Back in the days drivin' an Accord"

"Keep it nappy or braided up Dirty in the cockpit, blazin' up (FIRE!)"

"I think America concedes that (true American music) has sprung from the negro. When we take these things that come from the art of the Negro and from the heart of the man farthest down."

"Life is like a trumpet. If you don't put anything into it, you don't get anything out."

"If my serenade of song and story should serve as a pillow for some composer's head, as yet perhaps unborn, to dream and build on our fond melodies in his tomorrow, I have not labored in vain."

"It's a street in Memphis that W.C. Handy wrote about in his "Beale Street Blues." You know, If Beale Street could talk,/If Beale Street could talk,/Married men would have to take their beds and walk."

"The blues is a method. It represents a treatment of songs, first by W. C. Handy, and then by a great line of singers and musicians."

"Music isn't enough. Performers aren't enough. There must be someone that loves music as much as life. For you, and remember this always, those of us with something urgent to say, we give everything."

"He was, this smoldering, passionate young pianist, generous, lovable, deeply gentle of heart."

"Few artists have ever battled so manfully with management or so unheitatingly sassed the press. He was afraid of nobody because his heart was pure."

"If I exorcise my devils, well, my angels may leave too."

"Well, I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy."

"And sometime around 2 AM you end up taking advantage of yourself. Ain't no way around that. Making a scene with a magazine."

"Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk."

"I know a place where a royal flush can never beat a pair, and even Thomas Jefferson is On The Nickel over there."

"How do the angels get to sleep / When the Devil leaves his porch light on?"

"I'm so goddamn horny, the crack of dawn better be careful around me!"

"Your veal cutlet gets up off the plate, It walks down to end of the counter and beat the shit out of my cup of coffee. I guess the coffee just wasn't strong enough to defend itself."

"I don't have a drinking problem ‘cept when I can't get a drink."

"And the things you can’t remember tell the things you can forget, that history puts a saint in every dream."

"The piano has been drinking, not me."

"If there's one thing you can say about mankind, there's nothing kind about man."

"What's he building in there? We have a right to know."

"Come down off the cross, we can use the wood."

"And someone will head south 'til this whole thing cools off."

"And their mouths are cut like razor blades, and their eyes are like stilettos, and her radiator's steaming and her teeth are in a wreck, she won't let you kiss her, but what in the hell do you expect?"

"If you get far enough away you'll be on your way back home."

"The large print giveth and the small print taketh away."

"The face forgives the mirror, the worm forgives the plough, the question begs the answer, can you forgive me somehow?"

"Some men are searching for the Holy Grail, but there ain't nothing sweeter than riding the rail."

"Pregnant women and Vietnam vets, beggin on the freeway, bout as hard as it gets."

"Well, you know when you're the opening act for large groups? Sometimes you feel like a rectal thermometer, you're going out there taking the temperature of the audience."

"Our Father, who art in Cribari, hallowed be thy glass. Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in the lounges. Give us this day our daily splash, and forgive us our hangovers as we forgive those who continue to hangover against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil...and somebody give us all a ride home."

"Disneyland is Vegas for children. When I went with the kids, I just about had a stroke. It's the opposite of what they say it is. It's not a place to nurture the imagination. It's just a big clearance sale for useless items. I'm not going back, and the kids won't be allowed to return until they're eighteen, out of the house. And even then, I would block their decision."

"(When asked for advice for younger musicians) "Break windows, smoke cigars, and stay up late. Tell 'em to do that, they'll find a little pot of gold.""

"The dog won't bite if you beat Him with a bone"

"She's been married so many times she's got rice marks all over her face"

"I collaborate with my wife on the songs, and every aspect of it, really— composing, and arranging, and recording, all that business. We have a rhythm and a way of working it. It's kind of like borrowing the same ten bucks from somebody over and over again. But when you live together, it makes it a lot easier, the pay back."

"Songs are really just very interesting things to be doing with the air."

"They say that I have no hits, and I'm difficult to work with. And they say that like it's a bad thing."

"The world is a hellish place, and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering. It cheapens and degrades the human experience, when it should inspire and elevate."

"We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness....We are monkeys with money and guns."

""I always wondered how Tom Waits would sing 'Greensleeves'...." --Loreena McKennitt, "The Visit"."

"I've also gotten weird letters, suicide letters, girls threatening to jump if I don't get in touch with them. So you think, "This is bullshit," but then you think, "What if it's not? Who wants to take that chance?" I write them back, tell them to hang in there, if things are that bad, they have to get better. But I'm not altogether stable myself, so who am I to give advice?"

"When I was a kid back in Kentucky, we went to this church where my uncle preached. It was kind of a weird Baptist, full-on kind of place. People kept running up to the pulpit and grabbing his ankles and being saved. Lots of crying. Even then, at six or seven, I questioned how pure the emotion could be if it were on such display."

"We're all a mishmash of extremes. I know that I have demons. I don't know if I want to get rid of them altogether, but I would like to experience them in a different way. Maybe go face to face with them. I've never really had the time to go to therapy. Well, here and there. But not enough to help me."

"I despise those prick actors who say, "I was in character," and "I became the character," and all that stuff. It's hideous. It's just masturbation at the highest level."

"I see kids who are complete cynics. They're not dreaming. They're out there with high-powered weapons, smoking crack behind the 7-Eleven. They've seen it all. These kids are going to take us into 2000 and beyond. That's scary, man. I wouldn't say I'm pessimistic or optimistic. I'm more realistic, I guess. But not cynical. I look. I watch."

"I'm not a Blockbuster boy, I never wanted to be. I just don't want to look back in 30 or 40 or 50 years and have my grandkids say, "You did a lot of stupid shit, Granddad. What an idiot you were, smiling for the cameras and playing the game.""

"I had an incident with a really dumb magazine called Voici where they printed a photograph of Lily-Rose, a long-lens shot from very far away, and I just went ballistic. You can sue them — I've sued a couple of times, Vanessa's sued and we win every time — but this time I was beyond suing. I just wanted to beat whoever was responsible into the earth — I just wanted to rip him apart.So I tracked him down and gave him a few suggestions about how to live life and stay healthy and he took my advice. Because that's just unacceptable. They can do anything they want to me — and most tabloids have — but not my kid, not my pure, innocent little baby. She didn't ask to be in this circus."

"I'd like to think I was reborn May 27, 1999 [when his daughter Lily-Rose was born]. Everything changed once I held [her] in my arms, and those innocent eyes stared into mine. Until that moment, I had been possessed with 'me' and 'my career.' Suddenly, there was someone who depended on me, who I was responsible for."

"Lily-Rose is 2-1/2, and each day is a new discovery for her. I want to be there and live it with her. When she was 6 months old, I held a paint brush in her hand. By the time she was 1, I was guiding her hand to paint with acrylics. Also, I showed how to keep her brushes clean. Now, she's intrigued by pastels and going through her 'purple phase.' "She's developing from abstract into more figurative. [showing a fax of his daughter's latest effort: a picture of daddy] See the shape of my head, my hair, my shoulder? An exact likeness. If I had my wish, she'd be a painter. That's why I'm keeping her sketches, even this fax. Someday, if she becomes famous, I can take it to the bank."

""Film star," "movie star" — whatever they want to try to call you is limiting, in the sense that I think an actor has to be able to play characters. To separate these things — you know: "leading man," "action hero," "character actor," stuff like that — I guess if I want to be close to anything, it would be a character actor, which is what I think an actor should be. So any of that "movie star" stuff, I just don't buy it. It just doesn't make sense to me."

"I want to do kiddie movies now. I'm fed up with adult movies — most of them stink. At a certain point with movies it becomes all about mathematics: this has to lead up to this, this has to lead up to that — you're always bound by some kind of formula. But since having kids and watching lots of animated cartoons and all those great old Disney films, I think they're better, they're much better. They're more fun and they take more risks."

"I always figured that once I wrapped a film, then anything beyond that is none of my business. If I can avoid seeing the final product, then all I have in my head is feeling good about the experience."

"The ultimate for me would be to do a feature that didn't require any narrative structure."

"The real movie stars were Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, Spencer Tracy, Montgomery Clift. How could I put myself in the same category as Clark Gable? Tom Cruise is a great movie star. Do I consider myself a movie star? I consider myself a guy with a good job, an interesting job."

"I do have an affinity for damaged people, in life, in roles. I don't know why. We're all damaged in our own way. Nobody's perfect. I think we are all somewhat screwy, every single one of us."

"Depp: I would never be disrespectful to my country, to the people, especially the kids who are over there serving in the armed forces. My uncle was wounded in Vietnam, paralyzed from the neck down. I would never say those things the way they claim I said them. Interviewer: What exactly did you say? Depp: I essentially said the United States is a very young country compared with Europe. We're still growing. That's it. I wouldn't say anything anti-American. I'm an American, and I love my country. Interviewer: What's your view of President Bush? Depp: What can I say? He's somebody's kid. He's somebody's father. God bless him. Good luck. You know what I mean? I don't agree with his politics, and I'm not going to pretend to, but I don't agree with a lot of people's politics."

"When I was a kid, we watched the Vietnam War on the six o'clock news, and it was desensitizing. You felt you were watching a war film; meanwhile you were really watching these guys getting blown to bits. Parents need to protect their kids from watching that stuff."

"I just don’t quite understand it [the press], really. I don’t understand the animal. It’s a strange, roundabout way of selling something; it leaves a foul taste... The thing that fascinates me is: who cares what an actor thinks?"

"I’ve known that there have been a kind of select group of people, amazing die-hard supporters, even through some of the more, shall we say, odd films. These people, bless them, have stuck with me the whole length of the road. To say that you appreciate it is not nearly enough. It’s part of the essence, or fuel, of what keeps you going.These people are my boss; they’re the ones who keep me employed. A couple of times, they could have said, Let’s abandon him. And they haven’t. You don’t want to let them down."

"Awards are not as important to me as when I meet a 10-year-old kid who says, "I love Captain Jack Sparrow.""

"I like the Coen brothers. Their films are smart and disturbing. I am very impressed by what George Clooney is doing now. He is very political. I like the fact that he did Oceans Eleven and Oceans Twelve, made all that money and then leveraged the money and his success into interesting projects. Johnny Depp has also set up a production company and is showing an interest in risky projects that will not be easy. I am sorry that it is hard for the average person, and even for an above-average person, to see a film that is not a Hollywood production. You see those films only in the festivals. There are few people there. That is worrying. People don't think. My goal in work is to make them think. The media do the opposite."

"We watched everything...A family favorite was Cry-Baby starring Johnny Depp. Whenever the John Waters film broke out in song, we would all scream and start singing, too."

"It Don't Mean a Thing (If It Ain't Got That Swing)."

"I think of music sometimes in terms of color [...] and [in a furnace] I like to see the flames licking yellow in the dark and then pulsing down to a kind of red glow."

"[Sights enabling musical inspiration] The memory of things gone is important to a jazz musician [...] Things like the old folks singing in the moonlight in the back yard on a hot night, or something someone said long ago. I remember I once wrote a sixty-four-bar piece about a memory of when I was a little boy in bed and heard a man whistling on the street outside, his footsteps echoing away. Things like these may be more important to a musician than technique."

"As Bach says [...] if you ain't got a left hand, you ain't worth a hoot in hell."

"[Expressing a liking for trains] Folks can't rush you until you get off."

"You can't write music right [...] until you know how the man that'll play it plays poker."

"[Y]ou've got to write with certain men in mind. You write just for their abilities and natural tendencies and give them places where they do their best—certain entrances and background stuff. You got to know each man to know what he'll react well to. One guy likes very simple ornamentation; another guy likes ornamentation better than the theme because it gives him a feeling of being a second mind. Every musician has his favorite licks and you gotta write to them."

"I know what sounds well on a trombone and I know what sounds well on a trumpet and they are not the same. [...] I know what Tricky Sam can play on a trombone and I know what Lawrence Brown can play on a trombone and they are not the same either."

"My band is my instrument more than the piano."

"Playing "Bop" is like playing Scrabble with all the vowels missing."

"[Asked about the vogue for Rock 'n' Roll and calypso] [N]o matter what you call it, music is as good as it sounds. Music is an oral art. Until you hear it, it is not music and if it sounds good it is good."

"The piano players were very important in the early days, and the great piano players were always on the East Coast; there never was anybody in the West who could play two notes. (By West I mean ; in those days there was no other West to speak of, west of that.) , who was mainly a writer and had more music published than anyone else, played piano like one of those high school teachers in Washington; as a matter of fact, high school teachers played better jazz. Among other things, his rhythm was unsteady; but that's the kind of piano the West was geared up to. On the other hand, the piano players on the East Coast did the most impossible things. If you dig up the early piano rolls or records by , you will hear the most beautiful and perfect performances. was a giant of those days, too. It is one of my great regrets that when the Lion used to come up to my house I didn't have a recording machine so that I could preserve some of those early performances of his."

"It's like an act of murder; you play with intent to commit something."

"There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind ... the only yardstick by which the result should be judged is simply that of how it sounds. If it sounds good it's successful; if it doesn't it has failed."

"Every man prays in his own language."

"How can anyone expect to be understood unless he presents his thoughts with complete honesty? This situation is unfair because it asks too much of the world. In effect, we say, "I don't dare show you what I am because I don't trust you for a minute but please love me anyway because I so need you to. And, of course, if you don't love me anyway, you're a dirty dog, just as I suspected, so I was right in the first place." Yet, every time God's children have thrown away fear in pursuit of honesty-trying to communicate themselves, understood or not, miracles have happened."

"Fate is being kind to me. [...] Fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young."

"[Asked about his "fate doesn’t want me to be too famous too young" comment] What else could I have said? [...] In the first place, I never do give any thought to prizes. I work and I write, and that's it. My reward is hearing what I have done, and unlike most composers, I can hear it immediately. That's why I keep these expensive gentlemen with me. And secondly, I'm hardly surprised that my kind of music is still without, let us say, official honor at home. Most Americans still take it for granted that European music–classical music, if you will–is the only really respectable kind. I remember, for example when Franklin Roosevelt died, practically no American music was played on the air in tribute to him. We were given a dispensation, I must admit. We did one radio program dedicated to him. But by and large, then as now, jazz was the kind of man you wouldn't want your daughter to associate with. The word 'jazz' has been part of the problem [...] It never lost its association with those New Orleans bordellos. In the nineteen-twenties, I used to try to convince Fletcher Henderson that we ought to call what we were doing "negro music". But it's too late for that now. The music has become so integrated you can't tell one part from the other as far as color is concerned. Well, I don't have time time to worry about it. I've got too much music on my mind."

"Roaming through the jungle of "oohs" and "ahs," searching for a more agreeable noise, I live a life of primitivity with the mind of a child and an unquenchable thirst for sharps and flats."

"Louis Armstrong was on J-and never got off his J-never, never stopped. I mean for all intents and purposes, died with his trumpet in his hand. So did Duke Ellington, all those people who inspire one, who inspire me. Duke was still going on the road right up till the last. Louis Armstrong still on the road till the very last. I appreciate that, I respect it and I am grateful for it. I am grateful, in the name of my grandson I am grateful."

"Of course anything that Duke does I like. He just seems to have a sixth sense about things turning out so good ... But I especially like the marriage between strings and what he did with the band. He didn't confine the strings to just whole notes and half notes, which most guys do, but he gave them little pizzicato things and little staccato things in there, which works out beautifully ...."

"Well, that's about the quintessence of slick, professional, expert, boring arrangement. I couldn't say offhand who it was. As I say, I haven't heard jazz for a year. I found it dull—the last word in polish and professionality [sic]—but dull."

"That's wild! I'll start off with five stars and work backwards from there. Now there, to me, is the most perfect band in existence, whether you're thinking of it orchestrationally or in terms of Duke's immensely creative writing. I can't think of anybody I admire more than this man; nobody could even be compared with him, except Billy Strayhorn. Duke does something with this old, tired instrumentation of trumpets, trombones and saxophones, and he has a perfect way of utilizing the men's specific sounds. Anything he plays is a work of art. The band is out of tune, for instance, and it doesn't even matter. They almost have their own brand of intonation. Duke can take an exotic-sounding idea and create something – you might call it sophisticated crudity. It gives both the qualities that I look for – an earthy quality and the sophisticated quality."

"Since jazz is usually celebrated as an improvisor’s art, it may seem paradoxical that one of its major figures was a composer. Though Duke Ellington was a notable pianist, he declared, ‘My band is my instrument,’ and for over half a century he made it the medium of a peerless body of work. For Ellington, composition was never an abstract process, but a direct response to people and situations. He once said, ‘I see something and want to make a tone parallel,’ and the titles of his works are a catalogue of incidents, encounters and atmospheres. ‘Haunted Nights’, ‘The Mooche’, ‘Daybreak Express’, ‘Black, Brown and Beige’ – every Ellington piece enshrines a life in motion, pursued with spontaneity. And Ellington’s lifelong companions were the members of his band – among them the gutbucket growls of trumpeters Bubber Miley and Cootie Williams, the arching sensuousness of altoist Johnny Hodges and the rumbling majesty of Harry Carney’s baritone. As individual and sometimes contrary a set of virtuosos as ever shared a bandstand, he composed with these sounds and personalities in his head, writing specifically for them. And they provided the raw material for his astonishing originality in harmony and orchestration. To many, Ellington may have been known for such lush popular hits as ‘Sophisticated Lady’, but his colleagues recognised an attainment of another order. As Miles Davis put it, ‘Some day all the jazz musicians should get together in one place and go down on their knees and thank Duke.’"

"The first jazz musician was a trumpeter, Buddy Bolden, and the last will be a trumpeter, the archangel Gabriel."

"Some stances are just conducive to swinging. If I stand up straight for too long it's harder to swing. Plus my feet hurt."

"They take your drawers off for you, they show your ass, they sell bullshit, they call themselves 'niggaz' and the women 'bitches' and 'hos' and it's fine with everybody. ...That's what the essence of decadence is. Civilisation is an effort."

"I had a trumpet, but I didn't want to be a trumpet player. I wanted to be some type of athlete or in some type of scholarly activity, be a chemist or something―I had my little chemistry set, and I liked playing with it."

"I always believed in working hard. ...That’s something that my father and my great-uncle would always tell me. My great-uncle was a stone-cutter for the cemetery, and he was in his nineties. He would always say, "Learn how to work a job. Your job is your identity. You don’t work a job for somebody else. You work your job for yourself." So when I got to be serious about music, I started practicing, and trying to look for teachers."

"I think that virtuosity is the first sign of morality in a musician. It means you're serious enough to practice."

"That's democratic leadership. It's like a flock of geese. They make the calls from the back. ...If you really are leading, everybody is leading. ...Chris Crenshaw ...started to tell me, from the last two songs, who hadn't played. ...So then we all started to look out for each other. ...Then we start to negotiate the song so that we make sure everyone plays."

"The level of corruption we're seeing now... I'm a nonpartisan attacker of the corruption I see. I've been doing it for 40 years, and what you're seeing in the public space now is the type of arrogance and criminal activity that we were always working our way towards. Now you see it. ...[H]ow do the people at large respond to this? ...The judicial system is not saving us the way it should. ...[W]e have to wake up and say "we're tired of this..." And... if we don't, we're going to be just like all the other things that could've been something."

"[I]n jazz you can plug the base amp in, the drummer can play loud, one soloist can play 400 choruses, and the next one can fight by playing 430. The music breaks down. You have to balance your freedom to improvise with restraint that comes with swinging and recognizing other people. Democracy dies when you do not understand the need for leveling, and to create wealth for everybody, and to see in your neighbor not an enemy, but a friend, and for elites to manage themselves."

"That's what I have to say as a band leader. I can't say, "Well, I'm going to solo on every tune. Every time somebody plays it's me." That's not the solution."

"[W]e're in trouble right now, but... a doctor doesn't go into a place where a lot of people are sick and say, "Man, a lot of people are sick here." You're the doctor, man! Come in and help people. So let's roll up our sleeves. A lot of talking always goes on about democracy. Let's see! ...I'm the doctor of democracy. Let's go!"

"I'm writing my 5th . It's called the Liberty Symphony. ...It will be rah, rah optimism, but it will also be movements like, "This you did, despite the word of the Lord." ...I take all this very seriously."

"The reason why the music is important is that it's an art form—an ancient art form—that takes in the mythology of our people."

"Flexibility is an essential part of Jazz. It's what gives Jazz music the ability to combine with all other types of music and not lose its identity."

"Wynton Marsalis' skills have grown as fast as his ambition, and he is the most ambitious younger composer in Jazz."

"How you feel about Wynton Marsalis may indicate how you feel about jazz. To some fans he’s been a kind of saviour, restoring the music’s essence by reconnecting it to its roots in blues and swing, after its post-1960s fragmentation into fusion, free, world, acid, smooth, etc. But to others, his neo-conservatism is actually anti-jazz, restricting its evolutionary energy and creating ‘mausoleum music’. But no one doubts Marsalis’s authority, sincerity and talent. His virtuosity made him famous when he was barely out of his teens, achieving the unprecedented feat of winning Grammy awards in both classical and jazz categories in the same year. In fact, his passion for the trumpet first led him to jazz. Growing up in New Orleans in the 1970s, Marsalis was a mere dabbler in funk until his classical trumpet teacher introduced him to such jazz masters as Clifford Brown. His imagination was fired by a music that combined individuality and virtuosity, forged in African-American experience. That devotion to the heritage and expressive power of jazz still informs everything Marsalis does. It’s why he has fiercely decried the sort of all-purpose dumbing down which, to him, misrepresents the legacy of such African-American heroes as Armstrong, Ellington and Monk. As the trumpeter berated a critic: ‘We are not some hip sub-culture for your entertainment. Jazz is the most intelligent music of all time.’"

"I’ll play it and tell you what it is later."

"I can't tell... All those white tenor players sound alike to me."

"Is that what you wanted, Alfred?"

"The music has gotten thick. Guys give me tunes and they're full of chords. I can't play them...I think a movement in jazz is beginning away from the conventional string of chords, and a return to emphasis on melodic rather than harmonic variation. There will be fewer chords but infinite possibilities as to what to do with them."

""You can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played." and "I love Pops" (Louis' nickname) … Louis has been through all kinds of styles. That's good tuba, by the way. You know you can't play anything on a horn that Louis hasn't played — I mean even modern. I love his approach to the trumpet; he never sounds bad. He plays on the beat — with feeling. That's another phrase for swing. I also love the way he sings."

"When they make records with all the mistakes in, as well as the rest, then they'll really make jazz records. If the mistakes aren't there too, it ain't none of you."

"I love Pops, I love the way he sings, the way he plays - everything he does, except when he says something against modern-jazz music."

"What am I supposed to say to that? That's ridiculous. You see the way they can ____ up music? It's a mismatch. They don't complement each other. Max and Mingus can play together, by themselves. Mingus is a hell of a bass player, and Max is a hell of a drummer. But Duke can't play with them, and they can't play with Duke. Now, how are you going to give a thing like that some stars? Record companies should be kicked in the ___. Somebody should take a picket sign and picket the record company."

"Take it off! That's some sad ____, man. In the first place, I hear some Charlie Parker cliches. . . . They don't even fit. Is that what the critics are digging? Them critics better stop having coffee. If there ain't nothing to listen to, they might as well admit it. Just to take something like that and say it's great, because there ain't nothing to listen to, that's like going out and getting a prostitute. [Leonard Feather: This man said he was influenced by Duke Ellington.] I don't give a ____! It must be . Right? I don't care who he's inspired by. That ____ ain't nothing. In the first place he don't have the - you know, the way you touch a piano. He doesn't have the touch that would make the sound of whatever he thinks of come off. I can tell he's influenced by Duke, but to put the loud pedal on the piano and make a run is very old-fashioned to me. And when the alto player sits up there and plays without no tone . . . That's the reason I don't buy any records."

"My ego only needs a good rhythm section."

"Coleman Hawkins told me never to play with someone older than me, and I never have. With older players, there's no force, no drive. With younger players, it's not that you know it all, or I know it all—it's I'm trying to learn it all."

"I know what the power of silence is. When I used to play in clubs, everybody was loud; there was a lot of noise. So I would take my mute off the microphone, and I would play something so soft that you could hardly hear it... and you talk about listening. Roy Eldridge did that. He's one of my favorites."

"The only thing I'm interested in is the music and the musicians. I don't acknowledge applause 'cause I'm giving them something. They're not giving me anything with their applause. Can I write that down?"

"Billie Holiday—she was the nicest woman in the world, you know. All she wanted to do was sing. They picked on her and picked on her to get money out of her. You do drugs 'cause you like to, not 'cause it's a life-style.... They picked on Billie so much. She said, "Miles, come and see me in Long Island." She was in love with one of my kids and his curly hair—he used to ride my bicycle and watch the horse at Aqueduct. She said, "Miles, if they'd just leave me alone; they could have the house—everything." You know the way singers shake their asses now. Billie didn't have to do that. Her mouth was so sensuous; she was pretty and she would say certain words and her mouth would quiver, and she always had this white gardenia and long gloves."

"If somebody told me I only had an hour to live, I'd spend it choking a white man. I'd do it nice and slow."

"He never wasted a melody. He never wasted a phrase. He and Duke Ellington changed the whole sound. There is no way to describe it because there's nobody on this earth that can do that anymore. What he did to the texture of an orchestration, what he did with a pop song is like writing an original piece. Students will discover him. They'll have to take his music apart layer by layer. That's how they'll know what kind of genius he was."

"For me, music and life are all about style."

"I've changed music four or five times. What have you done of any importance other than be white?"

"Why'd you put that white bitch on there?"

"When you are creating your own shit, man, even the sky ain't the limit."

"Don't play what's there, play what's not there."

"A legend is an old man with a cane known for what he used to do. I'm still doing it."

"Try taking the fucking horn out of your mouth."

"It's that goddamned motherfucking 'Machine Gun.'"

"He could very well be the Duke Ellington of Rock 'n' Roll."

"A lot of Negro style-the style of a man like Miles Davis or Ray Charles or the style of a man like myself is based on a knowledge of what people are really saying and on our refusal to hear it. You pick up on the beat, which is much more truthful than words."

"Another place I worked a lot was the Open Door, where we used to go to hear Miles. I didn't go to hear Miles; I went to see his wardrobe, because he had gorgeous clothes. He always played into the drapes and showed complete contempt for the audience."

"I would like to hear more of the consummate melodic master, but I feel that big business and his record company have had a corrupting influence on his material. The rock and pop thing certainly draws a wider audience. It happens more and more these days, that unqualified people with executive positions try to tell musicians what is good and what is bad music. It’s tempting for the musician to prejudice his own views when recording opportunities are so infrequent but I for one am determined to resist the temptation."

"Miles said he looked on his need for constant change as a curse. However, Miles, along with Duke Ellington, in terms of looking for models of how you strategize with a band, have been there constantly in the background for me. Not the Beatles as a construct for a group, not Led Zeppelin, not the Floyd. My guides have always been Miles and Duke."

"And on one particularly weighty draft he turned in, I told him to go home that night, pour a drink, and listen to some Miles Davis. I told him the thing about Miles Davis is the silences. The notes he doesn’t play. So with that in mind, go take another swing at your draft, find me some silences, and then I’ll get to work."

"When the world speaks of Miles, the legend, they have no idea who the man really was. The Miles I knew was sensitive and ailing, bruised by the hurts this life metes out. With trembling lips, he told me of the years during his childhood in East St. Louis when he'd been called Blackie by his friends and even some of his family, gazed down upon as a nobody, rendered invisible by his dark hue. He told me of the time, at age thirteen, when he'd been seduced by a grown woman, forced into his first sexual encounter with a friend of a relative. He spoke of the time when his father, a well-to-do dentist, had wanted him to follow in his career path, until a teacher who'd recognized Miles' gift intervened. "Forget it. Little Davis is not going to be any dentist," that teacher told Miles' father. "He's going to be a musician." The first time Miles blew that horn, he'd found his consolation. In playing that trumpet, he did the only thing he knew how, the one thing that made him feel worthy. That is the Miles I knew and, in time, grew to cherish."

"I don't excuse Miles' conduct any more than I dismiss my willingness, consciously or unknowingly, to indulge it. We mortals breathe incongruity. That I chose to stay with Miles is still, in many ways, confounding to me. And yet I've come to realize that Miles' behavior felt sorely familiar, a song, blaring and dissonant, that I'd learned in my early years. [...] My father had taught me the music. And my mother, in her own way, had emphasized each measure, hummed along with the clamor even as she railed against it. "Men will be men," she'd sometimes mutter, following a feud with my father, her way of rationalizing his adultery. [...] And in my Upper East Side high-rise, a world away from the slum of my girlhood and yet overlapping with it, Miles would be Miles."

"Most jazz musicians are happy just to achieve some popularity, but Miles Davis was a genuine icon. Famously fashionable even in his early days – a Davis biography was subtitled ‘The Man in the Green Shirt’ after a particularly stylish album cover – his adoption of jazz-rock in the 1970s and ’80s made him a superstar, bewitching audiences with not just his spare, declamatory trumpet-playing, but also his brooding persona. Dubbed the ‘Prince of Darkness’, he prowled about the stage in extravagantly hip garb, mercurially cueing his heavily amplified ensemble, creating a delicious aura of mystery and occasional menace. Musically, Davis’s foray into fusion divided his fans. Older listeners preferred the Davis of the ’50s and ’60s, whose brilliant bands reinvented and extended the bebop tradition as well as launching such seminal talents as John Coltrane and Herbie Hancock. But change seemed the driving principle of Davis’s artistic and personal life, and embracing rock seemed a necessary progression."

"The greatest work of the composer is often sublimation, that is, the deflection of energies, thoughts, occurrences, psychological and physical reactions, into socially constructive or creative channels."

"A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous. Got me?"

"That's right, The Mascara Snake. Fast and bulbous! Also, a tin teardrop!"

"Pena Her little head clinking Like a barrel of red velvet balls Full past noise Treats filled her eyes Turning them yellow like enamel coated tacks Soft like butter hard not to pour"

"You look dandy in the sky but you don’t scare me Cause I got you here in my eye In this lifetime you got my human gets me blues"

"I've written every drum bit I ever done, every note. I played the drums. I played the guitar. I played the piano. I wanted it exactly the way I wanted. Exactly. Any composer I would think would want it that way, and I don't deviate at all. Don't you think that somebody like Stravinsky, for instance, don't you think that it would have annoyed him if someone bent a note the wrong way?"

"[Beefheart] used to say, "You think you got a hard job, man? I gotta sing to that shit!""

"This album is one of the best albums in the past 20 years. There's nothing that touches this album. And that sounds like I'm being cocky, but I'm just so excited."

"A rental car in Savannah, Georgia. In the middle of touring, we had a week off. I have a problem with flying, so instead of going home, my wife came to me and we rented a car and drove around. Just pulled off on some dirt roads..."

"What song do I hate? I think "Daughters," by John Mayer, would be a good candidate. I don't know why he bugs me so bad.""

"Look at a band like the Bravery. They're signed because we're a band," Flowers said. "I've heard rumors about [members of] that band being in a different kind of band, and how do you defend that? If you say, 'My heart really belongs to what I'm doing now,' but you used to be in a ska band. I can see the Strokes play or Franz Ferdinand play and it's real, and I haven't gotten that from the Bravery. I think people will see through them."

""Now he's just signed Fall Out Boy, which means more of his attention will go to them that should have gone to The Killers"."

"It's something that you dream about, but Milli Vanilli got a Grammy. So it's hard to decide whether you're happy or not."

"Barack Obama being elected. I think about how… um… how my sons will grow up only knowing a black President. [Wells with tears] I can’t explain how that’s changed America. There’s an optimism now that wasn’t there for black people."

"I think I always knew that I would have kids but I didn’t… understand… the… whooooo [brims with tears once again]. That I could love my kids the way that I love ‘em. I didn’t know there was… room for that. You love your wife, your family, but it’s different with your kids. I didn’t know I could be so selfless. I would do anything for my kids. Anything. I guess everybody goes through it."

"He is a little genius. He's a deep soul and a spirit man. I think we've only seen the tip of the iceberg [with 2010's Flamingo]."

""The Killers' lead singer doesn't like me, but he can eat it. I think he has some great tunes." ~ John Mayer"

"If you have seen them live, they are incredibly boring. You remember what they used to look like? Then people started comparing them to us and suddenly they got a stylist," he said. "And Brandon frosted his hair and he's buying the cute pink jacket."

"I think both [Killers frontman] Brandon [Flowers] and I are alike because we both use too much hair product and run our mouths way more than our bands like."

"Oh no well I / been there before / and I ain't a comin back around / there no more / no I'm not"

"Shall we go, you and I, while we can? Through... the transitive nightfall of diamonds"

"When I was just a little young boy, Papa said "Son, you'll never get far, I'll tell you the reason if you want to know, 'cause child of mine, there isn't really very far to go.""

"Well, the first days are the hardest days, don't you worry anymore. When life looks like Easy Street there is danger at your door."

"It's the same story the crow told me, it's the only one he knows. Like the morning sun you come and like the wind you go."

"Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait. Wo-oh, what I want to know, where does the time go?"

"In the timbers of Fennario, the wolves are running round. The winter was so hard and cold, froze ten feet 'neath the ground...I sat down to my supper, 'twas a bottle of red whisky. I said my prayers and went to bed, that's the last they saw of me..."

"Nothing's for certain, It could always go wrong, Come in when it's raining, Go on out when it's gone, We could have us a high time, Living the good life, Well I know"

"See here how everything leads up to this day. And it's just like any other day that's ever been. Sun going up and then, the sun, it going down. Shine through my window, and my friends they come around."

"Trouble ahead, Trouble behind, and you know that notion just crossed my mind"

"Trouble ahead. A lady in red. Take my advice. You'd be better off dead!"

"Trouble with you is The trouble with me Got two good eyes But you still don't see Come round the bend You know it's the end The fireman screams and The engine just gleams"

"There is a road, no simple highway, between the dawn and the dark of night. And if you go, no one may follow. That path is for your steps alone."

"You who choose to lead must follow, But if you fall, you fall alone, If you should stand then who's to guide you? If I knew the way I would take you home"

"Let there be songs to fill the air."

"Lovers come and go, the river roll, roll, roll."

"Such a long, long time to be gone, and a short time to be here."

"In the secret space of dreams, Where I dreaming lay amazed, When the secrets all are told, And the petals all unfold. When there was no dream of mine, You dreamed of me"

"Sometimes the light's all shining on me, Other times I can barely see, Lately it occurs to me, What a long strange trip it's been..."

"It seems like all this life was just a dream"

"Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world, but the heart has its beaches, its homeland, and thoughts of its own. Wake now, discover that you are the song that the morning brings, but the heart has its seasons its evenings, and songs of its own"

"Sometimes we live no particular way but our own"

"I like your smile but I ain't your type, Don't shake the tree when the fruit ain't ripe"

"Once in a while, you get shown the light, in the strangest of places, if you look at it right."

"I won't slave for beggar's pay, likewise gold and jewels, but I would slave to learn the way, to sink your ship of fools."

"In another time's forgotten space, your eyes looked through your mother's face, Wildflower seed on the sand and stone, may the four winds blow you safely home. Roll away ... the dew"

"Crippled but free, I was blind all the time I was learning to see."

"Let my inspiration flow, in token lines suggesting rhythm, that will not forsake me, till my tale is told and done"

"The storyteller makes no choice, soon you will not hear his voice, his job is to shed light, and not to master"

"Inspiration, move me brightly, light the song with sense and color, hold away despair"

"While you were gone, these spaces filled with darkness. The obvious was hidden. With nothing to believe in. The compass always points to Terrapin."

"Ain't nobody messin' with you but you"

"There are things you can replace, and others you cannot. The time has come to weigh those things, this space is getting hot."

"But never give your love, my friend, Unto a foolish heart"

"There are times when you get hit upon, Try hard but you cannot give. Other times you'd gladly part, With what you need to live"

"Don't waste the breath to save your face, When you have done your best, And even more is asked of you, Let fate decide the rest."

"If someone can relate my guitar solo to an exercise in a book … that's no fun at all."

"It really sucks when music is so perfect you just don't need to hear it anymore."

"I'm ready to take the heat."

"My inspirations don't come from outer space, they just come to me. I have no idea why they come when they do."

"Song ideas have come to me in the middle of interviews, in the shower, or while I'm writing another song."

"I write the songs first and in most cases teach myself the technique second."

"My first [guitar] lessons lasted two weeks and it was "Jingle Bells." It didn't make any sense at all. I wanted to know how to play like Hendrix..."

"I've always spent a lot of time on my records with what I think were unique rhythmic approaches … but no one ever writes about your rhythm playing"

"When you hear an instrumental song someone is singing over, you know right away it's wrong."

"I can embarrass myself very easily on guitar. It's funny because people say to me I can play anything; I'm God on the guitar. But I could make a big list of everything I can't play... I'm grateful that people don't notice that."

"Eee-nee-mee-nee-my-nee-moe"

"18th September, 1970; Jimi Hendrix dies. I'm still on the football team when I get the news. So I take my helmet off and confront the coach to tell him I'm quitting the team. In a moment of brilliance he gives me one look and says "OK"."

"I think it's quite painfully obvious when someone's practicing through an amp, as opposed to someone who's really laying down some stuff that just happens to be fast."

"The Squares [his former band] never really fit in. We weren't rock enough. We weren't alternative enough. We weren't new wave enough and we weren't punk enough. Maybe we just weren't the right people for the band."

"Mozart was a freaky kind of shredder."

"I assume most guitar players are like me. They're playing, having fun; then they get a magazine in the mail that says "Shred Is Dead" and they say, "What the Hell?" They throw it away and keep on playing."

"When you think about where guitar playing is going today...: it's going everywhere at the same time."

"I'll tell you one thing: I will always play the sh** out of my guitar."

"Sounds cool. Looks cool. Feels cool."

"Relax. Be yourself. Play a lot."

"When these guitar mags bring up that stuff up and say such and such came up with this and that which is pushing the boundaries, I just say, "let's step back for a minute and admit something: nothing has happened for the last 100 years." And it's okay. It's not a bad thing … We're all working with "tools" that have been in existence for the last 100 years and there hadn't been a new "tool" for a long long time."

"Basic anatomy. That has got to be the ongoing frustration: Why can't my fingers do what I want them to do? Not being able to play what I hear in my head — that is the ultimate source of frustration."

"When you hear something you don't like, don't ever play it again."

"...Is the greatest guitar player in the world."

"Satriani's Law: There's at least a 30% chance that someone will print the name Satriani incorrectly"

"Guitars are fun. There are plenty of different kinds to play. They look cool. They sound cool. Don't *you* want to play guitar?"

"There's a fine line between giving the sense of freedom and being too free."

"Solos I kind of [couldn't] care less about. I know most people probably think that's what I care most about, but it's really the melody playing that is the cornerstone of what I'm working on."

"I've always done "the wrong thing" and had a pretty wonderful time doing it."

"I pride myself on being incorrigible. I have a very hard time being told what to do."

"When I want to play music, you've got to get me on tape or else it goes."

"I cruise the canyon to get some breeze With Hidden Treasures up my sleeve I like the light and hate the heat But I'll lick the blood right off your street"

"Oh I don't need an education Just a microphone's intoxication And I can't deal with concentration Give me tongues and stimulation"

"So hurting here is where I belong dreaming a song Blood on my hands to stay strong The flowers in the graveyard are all gone I don't belong There is no right to heal the wrong Soup's on hot feelin' like a do or die I can't throw up don't think i evan want to try"

"I'll go where secrets are sold Where roses unfold I'll sleep as time goes by"

"[If] you don't have any soul and you don't have any talent, jazz is what you should do. ... any fool can do it; all you gotta do is practice."

"This instrument is so easy, its a joke."

"Practice, practice, practice. Practice until you get a guitar welt on your chest...if it makes you feel good, don't stop until you see the blood from your fingers. Then you'll know you're on to something!"

"Apartheid isn't that cut and dry. All men are not created equal. The preponderance of South Africa is a different breed of man … They still put bones in their noses, they still walk around naked, they wipe their butts with their hands ...These are different people. You give 'em toothpaste, they fucking eat it."

"Ted likes his meat dead, enough said"

"With all due respect, many in the entertainment industry are deep into mind-altering substance abuse, and when one’s logic and intellectual calculating powers are replaced with dopey feel-good, fantasy-driven denial, the democratic party serves them well."

"Pat Buchanan...was fired by MSNBC for doing nothing more than voicing his rock-solid conservative thoughts on the otherwise failing network....The real message of the left is intolerance, zealotry, bigotry and hate. The left has no use for the First Amendment or the rest of the Constitution unless it fits their multicultural, euro-socialist agenda, which is failing all across Europe and everywhere it is practiced."

"If it was up to me, if you uttered the word 'gun control,' we'd put you in jail."

"And let's all be honest here; more of us believe in the American hero Sheriff Joe Arpaio's thorough investigation into your phony birth certificate and phony history than the phony media's smoke and mirrors."

"Big bangs don't make this. That's not a big bang. God made that. That's a liver. That's mystical. You and I can't make livers. Things banging don't make livers. This is mystical stuff. This is magic. This is perfection."

"I'll show you some security and I'll show you some peace: Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You fuck with us and we'll fucking melt you."

"They got how many trillions of dollars in gold and silver and jewelry and art and real estate and stained glass and they're passing the basket on Sunday so they can get the tomato farmers' donation?"

"[I] never thought too highly of anyone foolish enough to take on the nickname of a life-destroying dope product and promote such family-destroying conduct on stage."

"Though I'm no expert on all things Pantera, I did hear their version of 'Cat Scratch Fever' and it was exceedingly white. No soul, no balls, no feel. Caucasian all the way. Elements of dope, booze and heroin disconnect quite apparent as usual. There is no excuse for such horrifically negative, irresponsible, criminal, America-wrecking behavior as such chimp-like substance abuse. Period. They appeared as Ozzy-like zombies on TV. Ya think. American drunks and dopers are allahpuke terrorists' favorite allies. Damn them. Damn them all."

"I indeed do respect all people for the positives in their life. Sadly, there comes a time of diminishing returns in the balance. At the end of the day, my respect is reserved for those solidly in the asset column of mankind."

"I have obviously failed to galvanize and prod, if not shame enough Americans to be ever vigilant not to let a Chicago communist-raised, communist-educated, communist-nurtured subhuman mongrel like the ACORN community organizer gangster Barack Hussein Obama to weasel his way into the top office of authority in the United States of America."

"Because our legislative, judicial and executive branches of government hold the 10th Amendment in contempt, I'm beginning to wonder if it would have been best had the South won the Civil War. Our Founding Fathers' concept of limited government is dead."

"You probably can't use the term `toxic cunt' in your magazine, but that's what [Hilary Clinton] is. Her very existence insults the spirit of individualism in this country. This bitch is nothing but a two-bit whore for Fidel Castro."

"In Ted's world, we want the death penalty to be imposed at the scene of the crime."

"Should a kid going to a Grateful Dead concert who's caught with sugar-cube-encrusted LSD go to prison for life with no parole? Of course not. But should that guy get caned? Yeah. And should he go to prison in an overcrowded cell where a huge, unclean black man will fuck him in the ass every night? Yeah. Now, that sounds cruel, doesn't it? Well, tough fucking shit."

"Obama, he's a piece of shit, and I told him to suck on my machine gun. Let's hear it for him. And then I was in New York. I said, "Hey, Hillary, you might want to ride one of these into the sunset, you worthless bitch. Since I'm in California, how about , she might want to suck on my machine gun. And , ride one of these you worthless whore. Any questions?"

"I got to tell you, guys that have sex with each other's anal cavities -- how can we offend guys that actually have anal sex? Don't you think that might offend some of us who think that's despicable?"

"Along with President Obama and my hero Richard Pryor, we join Howard Stern, Johnny Cochran, Mark Furman [sic], O.J. Simpson, Kid Rock, James Brown, the mighty Funkbrothers, Al not so Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Louis Farrakhan, Malcolm X, Kanye West, Fifty Cent and pretty much every black rapper and hip hopper on earth, Chris Rock, Eddie Murphy, a few thousand NBA, NFL, MLB sports stars, legions of famous and not so famous musicians, actors, politicians, media personalities and assorted celebrities of every color, creed, ethnicity and walk of life, along with a few million others around the world who have used and continue to use the word nigger at one time or another. The dishonest referencing of the word by its first letter is the epitome of political correctness gone mad."

"The problem with guys like , the former press secretary of George W. Bush, is that he’s drunk the inside-the-beltway political Kookaid for so long that he actually believes his own spin. Poor guy went down for the third time in the denial goo long ago. Donald Trump’s biggest critics all believe that the engine of all things good and serious emanates from the professional Fedzillacrats who apparently enjoy wallowing in the said goo of Washington, D.C. ... Donald Trump is a mess? Maybe Mr. Fleischer should open up the political garbage can he and the majority of Fedzillacrats live in and take a look at the real, certifiable, rotting, stinking mess that has been caused by the professional scammers of both political stripes for the past 50 years. ... If you want to watch a real political train wreck, witness a real mess in progress, you need look no further than the professional politicians who have borrowed and spent this country into oblivion. Trump that if you dare."

"Mr. Trump didn’t create this economic swan dive to the street. Our politicians did."

"Our forefathers wouldn’t recognize the political labyrinth our professional politicians have created. The very things our forefathers warned us not to do as it pertains to embracing a centralized, powerful federal government is the very cliff our professional politicians have steered the Goodship America straight off of."

"American doesn’t need any more professional political punks in D.C., unless you believe sticking a red hot crowbar in your eye is an excellent treatment for cataracts. It’s professional political punks who have created the pus-filled infected wound of fundamental transformation, not Donald Trump. They are the ones calling for a bigger bureaucratic shovel for the hole they have already dug, not Donald Trump. They are the ones who have lied to Americans or intentionally hidden the truth from us, not Donald Trump. It’s professional politicians who are the enemy of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not Donald Trump."

"Donald Trump’s message sings to Americans because he doesn’t play politically correct brain-dead games. He calls them like he sees them. That’s refreshing to millions of Americans who believe political correctness is a public cancer that has eroded free speech and everything else good about America."

"Donald Trump should be given the Medal of Freedom for speaking his mind in such a bold, honest and straight-forward manner."

"GOP, your very existence is on the line here. Show some honesty or you’re done."

"The magic's in my hands When in doubt I whip it out I got me a rock 'n' roll band It's a free-for-all"

"I make the pussy purr with The stroke of my hand They know they gettin' it from me They know just where to go When they need their lovin man They know I do it for free They give me cat scratch fever"

"Ted Nugent would make a good cult leader. He’s got all the ingredients: charisma, fame in a popular art form, a highly articulate and highly singular worldview and a badass public persona. Also, the man is heavily armed."

"But while Nugent has taken some measure of responsibility for his "subhuman mongrel" remark, the comment is just a drop in the bucket compared to his long history of racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, animus towards immigrants, and propensity to use violence-tinged language."

"Where is this mysterious dictionary, in which “subhuman mongrel”—a direct racist slur, calling the President and the nine million or so Americans who identify themselves as multiracial animals, with an etymology that includes citations involving the Ku Klux Klan, slaveholders, and Nazis—is “street-fighter terminology” for a liar or breaker of oaths?"

"Then there is Ted Nugent — the NRA’s most prominent, unabashed bigot. “The Noog” has served as an NRA board member for years and has never been shy about his despicable views on race."

"Poetry is a sort of inspired mathematics, which gives us equations, not for abstract figures, triangles, spheres, and the like, but for the human emotions. If one has a mind which inclines to magic rather than science, one will prefer to speak of these equations as spells or incantations; it sounds more arcane, mysterious, recondite."

"It is better to present one image in a lifetime than to produce voluminous work."

"Image…that which presents an intellectual and emotional complex in an instant of time."

"The apparition of these faces in the crowd: Petals on a wet, black bough."

"Who brought this to pass? Who has brought the flaming imperial anger? Who has brought the army with drums and with kettle-drums? Barbarous kings. A gracious spring, turned to blood-ravenous autumn, A turmoil of wars-men, spread over the middle kingdom, Three hundred and sixty thousand, And sorrow, sorrow like rain."

"One discards rhyme, not because one is incapable of rhyming neat, fleet, sweet, meet, treat, eat, feet but because there are certain emotions or energies which are nor represented by the over-familiar devices or patterns."

"Poetry must be as well written as prose."

"It has been complained, with some justice, that I dump my note-books on the public."

"Artists are the antennae of the race but the bullet-headed many will never learn to trust their great artists."

"The only thing one can give an artist is leisure in which to work. To give an artist leisure is actually to take part in his creation."

"Hang it all, Robert Browning, there can be but the one "Sordello.""

"Make it new!"

"Genius is the capacity to see ten things where the ordinary man sees one."

"Properly, we should read for power. Man reading should be man intensely alive. The book should be a ball of light in one's hand."

"But the one thing you shd. not do is suppose that when something is wrong with the arts, it is wrong with the arts ONLY."

"Our own consciousness is incapable of having produced the universe. God, therefore, exists. That is to say, there is no reason for not applying the term God, Theos, to the intimate essence"

"If a man isn't willing to take some risk for his opinions, either his opinions are no good or he's no good."

"Both in Greece and in Provence the poetry attained its highest rhythmic and metrical brilliance at times when the arts of verse and music were most closely knit together, when each thing done by the poet had some definite musical urge or necessity bound up within it."

"My worst mistake was the stupid suburban prejudice of anti-Semitism, all along."

"I never was. When I left the hospital I was still in America and all America is an insane asylum."

"The art of letters will come to an end before A.D. 2000. I shall survive as a curiosity."

"Not one man in a thousand can be aroused to an interest in economics until he definitely suffers from the effects of an evil system."

"It is difficult to write a paradiso when all the superficial indications are that you ought to write an apocalypse."

"If a man have not order within him He can not spread order about him; And if a man have not order within him His family will not act with due order; And if the prince have not order within him He can not put order in his dominions."

"And even I can remember A day when the historians left blanks in their writings, I mean, for things they didn't know, But that time seems to be passing."

"Without character you will be unable to play on that instrument"

"The blossoms of the apricot blow from the east to the west, And I have tried to keep them from falling."

"With usura hath no man a house of good stone each block cut smooth and well fitting [...] with usura hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall [...] no picture is made to endure nor to live with but it is made to sell and sell quickly"

"What thou lovest well remains, the rest is dross What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage"

"The ant's a centaur in his dragon world."

"Pull down thy vanity, it is not man Made courage, or made order, or made grace, Pull down thy vanity, I say pull down. Learn of the green world what can be thy place"

"How mean thy hates Fostered in falsity [...] Rathe to destroy, niggard in charity"

"To have gathered from the air a live tradition or from a fine old eye the unconquered flame This is not vanity. Here error is all in the not done, all in the diffidence that faltered..."

"You damn sadist!" said mr. cummings, "you try to make people think."

"The temple is holy because it is not for sale."

"Pride, jealousy and possessiveness 3 pains of hell"

"And of man seeking good, doing evil."

"But the beauty is not the madness Tho’ my errors and wrecks lie about me. And I am not a demigod, I cannot make it cohere."

"Many errors, a little rightness."

"I have tried to write Paradise Do not move Let the wind speak. that is paradise. Let the Gods forgive what I have made Let those I love try to forgive what I have made."

"Here is the core of evil, the burning hell without let-up, The canker corrupting all things, Fafnir the worm, Syphilis of the State, of all kingdoms Wart of the common-weal, Wenn-maker, corrupter of all things Darkness the defiler Twin evil of envy, Snake of the seven heads, Hydra, entering all things Passing the doors of temples defiling the grove of Paphos, neschek, the crawling evil, slime, the corrupter of all things, Poisoner of the fount, of all fountains, neschek, The serpent, evil against Nature's increase, Against beauty"

"A pity that poets have used symbol and metaphor and no man learned anything from them for their speaking in figures"

"All other sins are open, Usura alone not understood."

"And for one beautiful day there was peace."

"To be men not destroyers"

"A slave is one who waits for someone else to free him."

"The author's conviction on this day of the New Year is that music begins to atrophy when it departs too far from the dance; that poetry begins to atrophy when it gets too far from music."

"Literature is news that STAYS news."

"Any general statement is like a cheque drawn on a bank. Its value depends on what is there to meet it."

"The man of understanding can no more sit quiet and resigned while his country lets literature decay than a good doctor could sit quiet and contented while some ignorant child was infecting itself with tuberculosis under the impression that it was merely eating jam tarts."

"Good writers are those who keep the language efficient. That is to say, keep it accurate, keep it clear."

"AT ABOUT THIS POINT the weak-hearted reader usually sits down in the road, removes his shoes and weeps that he 'is a bad linguist' or that he or she can't possibly learn all those languages. One has to divide the readers who want to be experts from those who do not, and divide, as it were, those who want to see the world from those who merely want to know WHAT PART OF IT THEY LIVE IN."

"Real education must ultimately be limited to one who INSISTS on knowing, the rest is mere sheep-herding."

"Hence "the serious artist," whom Pound describes in an early essay as the maintainer of the mental health of the state, has concerns identical with the serious philosopher, the serious ruler, the serious editor or publisher, the serious teacher. He keeps up values."

"His intelligence indeed has been a flowering of Western self‐awareness, with life‐bestowing and poisonous blossoms intermingled, as if all the beautiful vitality and all the brilliant rottenness of our heritage in its luxuriant variety were both at once made manifest in it."

"Chinese poetry, as we know it today, is something invented by Ezra Pound."

"Personally I admire several writers (Céline, for instance) who have gone over to the Fascists, and many others whose political outlook I strongly object to. But one has the right to expect ordinary decency of a poet. I never listened to Pound’s broadcasts, but I often read them in the B.B.C. Monitoring Reports, and they were intellectually and morally disgusting. Antisemitism, for instance, is simply not the doctrine of a grown-up person. People who go in for that kind of thing must take the consequences."

"I have been very excited by Ezra Pound's work with Chinese. People don't realize how much of Chinese culture is part of American culture. I mean, all those transcendentalists at the beginning of American writing."

"A musician once asked Ezra Pound if there was anywhere one could get all of poetry, in the sense that one could get all of music in Bach. Pound's response was that if a person would take the trouble really to learn Greek, he could get all of it, or nearly all of it, in Homer."

"Most of the great critics of English poetry have also been poets: Sir Philip Sidney, Samuel Johnson, Coleridge, Shelley, T.S. Eliot, and Ezra Pound, to name a few."

"Pound's ideas about Russian communism developed in two directions. First, he felt that there were basic similarities between the Russian and the fascist revolutions. Second, he felt a great deal of admiration for Lenin as a man of action in the mold of his hero, Mussolini (this was not an entirely accidental comparison, for the contemporary figure most admired by Mussolini was Lenin)."

"Pound's fascism-crazed mind"

"We have all the elements of being the worst band in the world: a bass player who’s got some slap-bass shit, heavy riff guitars, a DJ scratching on the songs, a crazy drummer, and a singer who’s in touch with his feminine side. Even our band name is the worst name ever: it evokes imagery of ‘Incubus’ in death-metal writing, with bullet belts across our chests."

"She is a girl so I wouldn’t slap her. I would lock her in a room full of spiders and let her think about what she’s doing to the youth of America."

"The girl I find who wants to talk about quantum theory in a bar is the one I want to marry."

"Female artists are the perfect example of a creator: They know how to make life and art with their bodies. Life comes from their bodies, so on a very basic level, they have more to write about."

"Men have a lot less to write about, unless you're somebody like Tom Waits or John Lennon. And the female voice is much more suited to melody. Men have this barky thing-we're domesticated apes with a microphone."

"I learned from a very young age that if I pursued the things that truly excited me, that they would reward in more important ways, like happiness"

"We don't know much about him. We do know that he came from a sperm meeting an egg. Actually, his name is Charles Mulholland. We don't know what he does, but he sure looks like he knows something."

"She has a fascination with Mayan prophecies, and she's writing a book that's sort of her remembrance of her past incarnation. Whatever she applies herself to, she makes it this beautiful, glorious world around her. All of us kids have always been artistic because of her influence."

"When we're making music together, it's like five men making love-in a very platonic sense. It's very erotic, because your spirits are intermingling, you're becoming one. It's also why it can get so heated. You're tapping into this electricity that's very primal."

"Morning View is I think collectively probably our favorite record that we have made as a band because it was the most effortless... um... in its conception... you know? It was a lot less slaving over parts and trying to just get together in this big beautiful room with a view of the ocean and parts and sounds and melodies and lyrics would just happen... they would just sort of spill out of us without us really trying... so to me that's sort of the most amazing way to write music or do any kind of art, which is by letting it happen... but one of the most important parts in any sort of.. uh... journey so to speak.. Is uh... the ride... and we've had a really good time riding to where ever it is we are going... and I don't even think any of us know particularly where it is going to take us... But it's been really fun sort of chasing it."

"Jose just got a tattoo of an ass tattooed on his ass the other day. It's actually quite fascinating. Confusing, but fascinating. When you come to the show, ask him about it. He'll show you."

"If I forgot some stuff, please excuse me; I ate the brown acid at Woodstock '69 and can scarcely remember my own name."

"I was in a bookstore, browsing through an old Life magazine, when I saw a picture of what the article called spontaneous human combustion. There were an old guy's legs and shoes, perfectly intact...then, right around his knee area, was just a pile of charred ashes. I was going through some turmoil in my life, both good and bad, and the image struck a chord, so...I wrote a song about it."

"I attribute a scab to the present state of society. The way the scab looks in its worst state is gross and chaotic and horrible, that's now, but when it breaks away, there's a brand new piece of skin that's stronger than before. It's like creation out of chaos."

"Lyrically speaking, I know that there were a lot of things going on in and around the world and there were some very specific people in my mind coming dangerously close to having megolomaniacal tendancies and so I did my best to write those thoughts down.""

"I was on an airplane last year when a talk show began playing on the TVs. I decided to start narrating for the people, which is a really great game if you're ever bored enough. I realized a time will probably come when television will watch us if we're watching it, if that hasn't already happened, figuratively or literally. It sounded like some sort of pseudo-Big Brother nightmare, so I wrote it down."

"I think perhaps love thrives on unlikely circumstance and chance : life thrives on these principles, and is life not love? And love not life?"

"To think that one's actions could please the masses is indeed a notion bound in irony; someone will inevitably find something wrong in almost everything. So do what it is that you do best and remember to have enough tolerance for two."

"I need a new pair of shoes : I need a new shiny car : I need to buy until I fry : I can not name what I'm trying to : I want my cock an inch bigger : I want new, flawless tits : I'm not enough as I was made, please complete my partial mind : I want my money back, this product has a hole."

"In my opinion, so much of it is really about what you had in mind when you got into it: was it only that you wanted to be a rockstar and see your name in lights? I never really had those kinds of dreams. I knew I loved music and I knew that when I sang in a certain way it made my chest and my whole stomach tickle and I liked it. It still does that same thing to me; I know I’m doing it right when it makes my core tingle a little bit. I get the same feeling when I’m painting a picture or when I get into that almost hypnotic state of writing – those things are incredible and those are the kinds of things that attract me to creativity."

"Imagine your brain as a canister filled with ink, Now think of your body as the pen where the ink resides. Fuse the two - Kapow! What are you now? You're the human magic marker, won't you please surprise my eyes?"

"I'm sick of limiting myself to fit your definition."

"On the surface you hate, but you know you need me."

"You can't make me think like you, mundane."

"You act as if there's blinders on your eyes!"

"Can someone please explain to me your ever-present lack of speed?"

"I think I grew a grey watching you procrastinate!"

"You've been raised in limitation, but that glove never fit quite right."

"Too bad the things that make you mad are my favorite things."

"When we get there, We're going to fly so far away Making sure to laugh while we experience Anti-gravity."

"Society must let the artist go, to wander off into their nebula."

"Your tangerine of electricity is ripe and on a vine!"

"I'm born, I'm alive, I breathe, In a moment or two I realize, That the sphere upon which I reside Is asleep on its feet, Should I go back to sleep?"

"the day you were born, you were born free. That is your privilege."

"Maybe if I looked in my heart, I could find a back door."

"Will I ever get to where I'm going? If I do, will I know when I'm there? If the wind blew me in the right direction, Would I even care? I would."

"It seems as though I'm going nowhere really fucking fast."

"You think that you're on the brink? The shit hasn't even begun to hit the fan."

"Consequence, you'll see, will be stranger than a gang of drunken mimes."

"Don't let the world bring you down. Not everyone here is that fucked up and cold. Remember why you came, and while you're alive, Experience the warmth before you grow old."

"It feels like trading brains with an imbecile."

"Just when you thought it was safe to think, in comes mental piracy!"

"What I'm looking for cannot be sold to me."

"What I want, and what I need, is and will always be free."

"Meet me in outer space."

"If you let them make you, They'll make you paper mache. At a distance, you're strong, until the wind comes Then you crumble and blow away."

"If you really want to live, why not try and make yourself?"

"Sometimes I feel the fear of uncertainty stinging clear."

"Lately I'm beginning to find that I should be the one behind the wheel."

"When I drive myself, my light is found."

"Whatever tomorrow brings, I'll be there with open arms and open eyes."

"I'd sooner sleep by an open fire and wake up fried."

"I need a map of your head, translated into English, so I can learn to not make you frown."

"I've had all that I can take and exploding seems like a definite possibility to me."

"Pardon me while I burst into flames I've had enough of the world and its people's mindless games. So pardon me while I burn and rise above the flames. Pardon me, pardon me. I'll never be the same."

"I've been thinking of combustication as a welcome vacation from the burdens of planet Earth - like gravity, hypocrisy, the perils of being in 3-D, and thinking so much differently."

"To resist is to piss in the wind. Anyone who does, will end up smelling. Knowing this, why do I defy? Because my inner voice is yelling. There is a fist pressing against Anyone who thinks something compelling. Our intuit we're taught to deny Yes, our soul, we're told's for selling."

"Get out from under precipice and see the sky."

"If you let them fuck you, there will be no foreplay."

"Perspective prys her once-weighty eyes and it gives you wings."

"I lean against the wind, pretend that I am weightless, and in this moment I am happy."

"The world's a rollercoaster, And I am not strapped in. Maybe I should hold with care, But my hands are busy in the air!"

"I am bottled, fizzy water, and you are shaking me up."

"Temporaryism has been the Black Plague and the Jesus of our age."

"Forgive my indecision. I am only a man."

"Seeing you is like pulling teeth, and hearing your voice is like chewing tin foil!"

"Kudos to those who see through sickness."

"I suggest we learn to love ourselves before it's made illegal."

"My biggest fear will be the rescue of me."

"On the back of every right, there's a wrong looming."

"I refuse to kneel before the sights you choose to see."

"If this is right, I'd rather be wrong. If this is sight, I'd rather be blind."

"I marvel at the stars, and feel my heart overflow."

"Floating down a river named Emotion...will I make it back to shore, or drift into the unknown?"

"If I met you in a scissor fight, I'd cut off both your wings on principle alone."

"All of us are heaven-sent, and there was never meant to be only one."

"Look. Find. Free."

"Even straight roads meander."

"Put down your hollow tips, And kiss your lover's lips, And know that fate is what we make of it."

"It's just another day in the life of apes with ego trips."

"You're so much more endearing with the sound turned off."

"The world is a drought when out of love."

"I have an open-door policy when it comes to blame."

"My secret arsenal is an infinite, ageless ink well. It's a fountain of youth and a patriot's weapon of choice."

"If you're looking for an open book - Look no further, I am yours."

"It pains me to believe that you have never stepped out of the skin you live with."

"This island isn't big enough for both of us...so who will swim in eel-infested oceans?"

"Price tags advertise your pride."

"Since when did what we paid for colored cloth gauge our gravity?"

"Insecurites are about as useful as trying to put the pin back in the grenade."

"This isn't coincidence. There's no such thing."

"This party is old and uninviting Participants all in black and white You enter in full-blown techincolor Nothing is the same after tonight."

"Your love is a verb here in my room."

"I wouldn't change a thing now that you're here."

"Some people fall in love and touch the sky. Some people fall in love and find quicksand."

"Bring your mouth and selective irreverence - We'll both see stars."

"Kill your doubt with the coldest of weapons: Confidence."

"If I turn into another, Dig me up from under what is covering the better part of me. Sing this song. Remind me that we'll always have each other When everything else is gone."

"Girl, it's time we met and made a mess."

"Wait, there is a light, there is a fire, illuminated attic. Fate or something better, I could care less,Just stay with me a while"

"To get their attention, start lobbing the light grenades (That burst and blind them with the truth! An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!)"

"Have a heart and try me, cause without love I won't survive."

"I'm not an alarmist, but someone should break the glass, and pull that red T-Lever down!"

"Before you swim, you gotta be okay to sink."

"Just undo yourself and see a second sun ascend."

"Give it time, girl, the fire feels divine. The sweetest things, they burn before they shine."

"I'm keeping an eye on the future, an eye on the past, and the present in my pocket."

"Songs of liberation echo from the dust."

"You're about as reliable as paper shoes in bad weather."

"On a burning bridge, your options are minimal at best Depending on where you're standing And how much breath is in your chest If it came down to it Would you high-tail home and hide? Or dance on fire and enjoy the ride?"

"Life's a match in a gas tank. Don't ever mourn the ebbing tide."

"There's so much more to get than wronged."

"Earth to Bella - You're treading water successfully. But are you really? Don't you want to see the deep? It's not so hard. Just forgive yourself and feel the water open in."

"Lyrically I'm untouchable, uncrushable. Getting mad blunted in the S-500."

"Kick in the door, waving the .44. All you heard was: "Poppa, don't hit me no more.""

"B-I-G P-O-P-P-A; no info for the DEA."

"Goodness Gracious The Paper! Where the Cash at? Where the Stash at?"

"Celebrate my escape, sold the Glock, bought some weight. Laid back, I got some money to make. Motherfucker!"

"I've got seven MAC-11s, about eight .38s, nine 9s, ten MAC-10s. The shits never end, you can't touch my riches. Even if you have MC Hammer and them 3-5-7 bitches."

"You're just mad 'cause I got my dick sucked, and my balls licked."

"Never get high on your own supply."

"Black and ugly as ever, however I stay Gucci down to the socks, rings and watch filled with Rocks."

"When I die? Fuck it, I wanna go to hell, 'cause I'm a piece of shit. It ain't hard to fuckin' tell."

"Fuck a holster, got the MAC-11 swingin' from my shoulder."

"Is Brooklyn in the house? Without a doubt, I'm the rapper with clout everybody yap about."

"Who the fuck is this? Pagin' me at 5:46 in the morning. Crack of dawnin'. Now I'm yawnin', wipe the cold out my eye. See who's this pagin' me, and why?"

"There's gonna' be a lotta slow singin' and flower bringin' if my burglar alarm starts ringin'."

"C4 to your door, no beef no more."

"It was all a dream, I used to read Word Up magazine. Salt-n-Peppa, Heavy D up in tha limousine. Hangin' pictures on my wall, every Saturday rap attack, Mr. Magic Marley Marl. I let my tape rock till my tape pop, smoking weed and bamboo, sippin' on Private Stock. Way back, when I had the red-and-black lumberjack, with the hat to match. Remember Rappin' Duke? Duh-ha duh-ha, you never thought that hip hop would take it this far. Now I'm in the limelight 'cause I rhyme tight. Time to get paid, blow up like the World Trade! Born sinner, the opposite of a winner. Remember when I used to eat sardines for dinner."

"Peace to Ron G, Brucy B, Kid Capri, Funkmaster Flex, Lovebug Starsky."

"I'm blowin' up like you thought I would, call the crib up, same number same hood, its all good."

"I made a change from a common thief, to up-close and personal with Robin Leach, and I'm far from cheap. I smoke skunk with my peeps all day, spread love it's the Brooklyn way. The moet and alize keeps me pissy. Girls used to diss me, now they write letters cuz they miss me. I never thought it could happen this rapping stuff. I was too used to packing gats and stuff. Now honeys play me close like butter played toast, from the Mississippi down to the East Coast. Condos in queens, indoor for weeks. sold out seats to hear Biggy Smalls speak. Living life without fear, putting 5 carats in my baby girls ears. Lunchies, brunchies. Interviews by the pool, considered a fool 'cause I dropped out of high school. Stereotypes of a black male misunderstood and it's still all good."

"Super Nintendo, Sega Genesis. When I was dead broke, man, I couldn't picture this."

"Birthdays was the worst days; now we sip champagne when we're thirsty."

"Damn right I like the life I live, 'cause I went from negative to positive."

"[A]nd if you don't know? Now you know, nigga."

"I love it when you call me Big Poppa; throw your hands in the air if you's a true player."

"Forget the telly, we just go to the crib, watch a movie in the Jacuzzi and smoke Ls while you do me."

"I'm going, going, back, back, to Cali, Cali."

"I only got beef with those that violate me; I shall annihilate thee."

"I kind of realized how powerful Tupac and I was (you know what I'm saying?) because Pac is a strong dude, I know dude. (You know what I'm saying?) We two ind"

"Representing the best of East Coast rap, Christopher Wallace, otherwise known as The Notorious B.I.G. or Biggie Smalls, is one of the most influential and acclaimed rappers in history. The New York based rapper has written some of the genre’s most well-respected albums and singles such as “Juicy,” “Big Poppa” and “Mo Money Mo Problems” among others. Wallace’s unique beats and rap flow often undermined the violent lyrical themes he showcased in his songwriting, though it was seen as a new and unprecedented approach to the gangsta rap genre at the time."

"You're Still You (lyrics by Linda Thompson)"

"Per Te (lyrics by Josh Groban)"

"I hoped to sell 50,000 records. My main goals were to sing my heart out, to challenge myself vocally, to find beautiful music that has great stories and to express what I love about the musicality of different languages. And if 10 people bought it, I'd be thrilled that 10 people listened to it. And if it was 10 million, I'd be thrilled that 10 million people listened to it. This is just beyond any dream that I could have possibly had.""

"Las Vegas Sun, 08/13/04"

"I've been fascinated by music for as long as I can remember. I was the kid on the playground in the third grade who would tell other kids about Paul Simon or Depeche Mode.""

"First and foremost, I'd like to continue taking risks with my music. Everything I've done so far has been a gut reaction, honest and real. And that's who I am. That's what I want my music to always be -- honest and real.""

"I'm not crossing over from anything. I think of it as pop music with different influences. "When I walk in the music store, [my] album is under classical/pop/easy listening. It's hard to say what genre it is. It's genreless. I try not to define what it is. I let the audience define it. Because for me, it's just me."

"When I make an album I take a lot of risks. I ignore the trends of the moment and one of the things I have to think of when making an album like this is the honesty of it. To connect. It goes against the grain. It's nice to know I can go against the grain."

"I wanted to experiment with that live energy, to push myself a little. It's very much about having intimacy with the music. I love theater - and I love playing in these old theaters. It's not a Vegas stage show. It's very much just me and the music and a five-piece band and a 20-piece string section from each city."

"It's really tough to make a name for yourself without compromising and without fitting yourself into a real specific mold. When I made the choice that I would be involved in every aspect of music and not necessarily make music for radio or MTV, I was saying, 'OK, this is me. You decide who it is.' ""

"I just have to feel it first. It can't be cerebral at all. I'm big on lyrics, a big lyric person, especially the kind of singing I do. It's hard to sound not cheesy sometimes with the voice I have with English songs.""

"I can only say so much about how I feel. Music is what I always turned to when I was feeling a certain way. It's been my reason for everything.""

"I try to have a real close connection with my fans. That's extremely important. They are the ones that have been there from the beginning and proved everyone else wrong.""

"It's a nice feeling. I was not like the popular guy in high school. This is revenge for all the bullies in high school [laughter]. It's a great feeling. Maybe women sometimes are more open to romantic music.""

"My life is an unfinished product, but instead of just saying, 'How do I top what I've accomplished,' I decided I wanted to move forward, express my growth and take a big step into the next chapter.""

"The shower is my time to open up my operatic chops, because of the enormous echo. You sound five times as big in the shower, so I break into some "Nessun Dorma" [from Puccini's Turandot] or Pearl Jam. You've got to go big when you're in the shower. There's no half-singing in the shower, you're either a rock star or an opera diva."

"I don't have a social life right now. I try to -- it's something that I miss -- but David Foster told me: 'The golden microphone is in front of your mouth. You have to sing into it or it will get passed onto someone else.' It's very lonely, what I'm doing. Even though you have a lot of people around you, they're not experiencing it first-hand. It's hard to name more than five close friends. As much as people want to understand, it's hard when you don't see someone for five months at a time, and they're like, 'C'mon, make time.' But I don't have time. My days are gone. There are a lot of firsts for me. And I'm not going to toss it off. It would be silly to say, 'No, I'd rather go see a movie.' I know there will be time for that later."

"I have to work hard to not look like a nerd all the time. My friends are the only people I know that don't care about my image. I need to have people who treat me just as Josh, not as Josh the singer."

"I was the hopeless romantic. I had so many crushes. But not on the real obvious girls. I was into the quirky ones. I was so shy, though."

"No matter what your age and no matter where you come from, everyone can change the world in some way, whether it's being a mentor to someone younger than you or someone that doesn't have as much experience as you. If you're passionate enough, you can do whatever you want and definitely change the world."

"If you were to secretly ask the most praised hip-hop producers, if given a top three, who they fear the most, Dilla’s name would chart on everyone’s list, hands down. ~ ?uestlove, drummer from The Roots"

"All the greats respected him the most. ... Common actually stayed with him in his last days -- they both stayed in L.A. together -- and we would go over there when we were working on the album. And I remember him giving me drums. It was such an honor for him to actually give me drums because I'd actually stolen so many drums off of his beat CDs. (laughs) ... Let's also talk about how many rappers bit his style. He even inspired a lot of rappers. The way he would space his words on the beat. The patterns he would get... All that. Whenever people do that, that's Jay Dee all day long. ~ Kanye West, Rapper and Producer, from an interview with Semtex on BBC Radio, February 18th, 2006"

"I can't begin to explain the influence his mind and ear has had on my band, myself, and the careers of so many other artists. The most humble, modest, worthy and gifted beatmaker I've known...and definitely the best producer on a mic. ~ Black Thought, MC from The Roots"

"When I found out Dilla passed, I was in Australia. I did not want to do the show anymore, my mind was heavy. Dilla existed in all of us and I felt a piece of myself was missing. How could I give them my all? But then I thought about Jay on stage in a wheelchair. I HAD to perform. The musicians and the true listeners already knew. I have to spread his legacy to the world, forever. The sounds from The Roots, myself, Mos Def, A Tribe Called Quest, Common, Jill Scott, Erykah Badu, D'Angelo, and of course the slum [Ed. note, Slum Village.] owe to his legacy. Now we are Jay Dee. Rest in peace, Dilla, we love you. ~ Talib Kweli, in one of his blog entries on http://www.talibkweliblog.com"

"Q-Tip comes in the room and says, "I want you to hear something". I'm hella excited 'cause either it's a new Tribe song or it's a beat for me. He tells the kid to put the tape in. He does and I hear a ghostly piano loop that has some shakers in it. Too Salsa for me. That was "Runnin'"! He plays another joint and I go crazy over it. That was "The Jam". He explains to me that the noise I keep flippin' over [is] someone holding the repeat button on the SP when its in 1/32! He played another joint, wasn't my speed. I didn't like the Beastie Boy sample at the top. That was "Drop!" The next joint played and only played for 15 seconds. I wanted that one. He explained that it was just an interlude though. I still wanted it. The next joint was hard, organ sounding joint. Sounds like something a west coast artist would take... w:Ice Cube maybe. That was "Gotta Kick Something That Means Something"! I took three tracks and told Tip that I wanted to add more tracks to the album. He said cool! Yes!!! I got three tracks from Tip!!! Tip looks at me and says, "I didn't make em...he did." I look at the kid and speak to him and he says "What Up Doe?" "What up, kid? What's your name?" "Jay Dee.""

"I knew him for a good three or four years before I knew he was sick! I was blown back by that, man. I never knew he was sick – he always kinda hid it from me. His music will always be alive and well, and I will make sure to that. He was one of the greatest, man. He was the greatest to ever do it, for the new cats. And for his mother to tell me that I was his favorite producer – I was like ‘Wow, that’s dope, man’. He really took it there. He kinda broadened me and opened my eyes again, and got me standing up straight on my toes, ‘cos that dude was really serious with it. ~ Pete Rock"

"Peter Rosenberg: How do you rank Dilla [out of the] all time producers?"

"Dilla was a good cat. He looked out for me, showing me how to work the SP1200, the (MPC) 3000, he used to set me up in his basement, and leave me there all night, while he went out the bar or to mess with some chicks. He was real open-hearted, but he could get on some wild shit. We fell out for a minute, but we mended it and it was all good. He just wanted people to hear the music, but I seen him snap off on cats, he was good people though. He just wanted to make music and do his thing. ~ DJ House Shoes"

"One time we were in the studio and didn't have a drum machine, and he went inside the booth and played the drums on his body. He knew how to EQ it right and everything, like, "Okay, he just made a song using his body." [laughs] It was serious. ~ James Poyser (from the Ruff Draft re-issue liner notes)."

""That’s how me and Dilla always worked, we had a crazy chemistry. We would just sit there cracking jokes, you know, smoking, he got the headphones on. He’d come up with a beat in like 10 minutes, take the headphones off, the beat’s banging through the speakers. Load it up, make sure the mic’s on, show me where to press play, where to stop at, he’d press record and go upstairs, I’d lay the verse, he’d come back down like done and done. Load the next one up, he’d talk on the phone, I’d lay another song. That’s just how we worked." ~ Phat Kat (on recording the Dedication to the Suckers EP in one night)"

"I had an upright — it took me years and years to get enough bread to get it... I'm from Florida, so one morning I woke up, go in the corner and the bass is in a hundred pieces, cause the humidity is so bad, I mean, the upright just blew up. I said forget it, man, I can't afford this any more. So I went out, got a knife and took all the frets out of my Fender. That was it."

"Give me a gig!"

"I was playing drums, and I had broken my wrist very bad playing football, and the bass player in the band... he wanted to split. So I just went to the bass; I went from Drums over to Bass. That was it. I was playing the bass within a week."

"I took the frets out of my bass after I was getting into jazz a lot and I wanted to have that upright sound."

"I never practiced a fretless ever, because the strings eat the neck up. So I would only play it on gigs."

"Saying Pastorius is the greatest jazz-based bassist of all time would not be a stretch. Unfortunately, Pastorius' off-stage demons seemed to get in the way of sustaining that greatness. In addition to his drug addiction, Pastorius dealt with bipolar disorder and harbored a nasty temper. Pastorius, who collaborated with the likes of Joni Mitchell and Ian Hunter, died in 1987 at 35 due to injuries suffered in a bar fight, ending a celebrated musical career where his innovative funk harmonies on the electric bass are still an influence on bassists to this day."

"A fiery and muscular player, Jaco Pastorius, who passed away in 1987 at the age of 35, remains one of the most influential electric bassists in jazz. His 1975 self-titled debut album is hailed by some as the best jazz bass album ever; it should be required listening for any aspiring bass player, especially his interpretation of Charlie Parker's "Donna Lee," or his harmonic work on "Continuum" and "Portrait of Tracy." Pastorius used to say he was the greatest bass player in the world, and dude could back it up with his virtuosic abilities."

"Being a DJ, I take the art of digging seriously...it has almost a karmic element of, 'I was meant to find this on top.' or, 'I was meant to pull this out because it works so well with this.' So it has a lot of meaning for me personally."

"Cutting and pasting is the essence of what hip-hop culture is all about for me. It's about drawing from what's around you, and subverting it and decontextualizing it."

"Producers like Organized Noize mix samples and live instruments really well, but for me, it almost feels like a cop-out, because I'm a collage artist. It's like, 'Damn, if only I could find this one part. Well, maybe if I just had somebody paint it, and then I'll put it out.' That almost feels like cheating. Lots of times, I have trouble finding bass lines, because it's not very often on a record that there are good open bass lines. Sometimes I wish I could just have somebody come in and do what I want him to do on a bass line. It would be so easy. But what I do just keeps things much more challenging, I guess."

"We have the ability to change our own reality."

"Sexual frustration is the single most powerful force in the world. We are the only species where that frustration affects things like the amount of money given to the poor and the length of welfare lines. I hate that the fact that George Bush's wife is an ugly old piece of shit could cause suffering among millions and could cause wars. I don't think it's any coincidence that Kennedy was the last president who had a wife worth fucking and he was the last good president."

"Pot put me in a position where I could walk far away from my playing and hear it in the second person. It helped me step away from myself. I stopped seeing the guitar as a thing I'm holding in my hands and started seeing it as a thing that's at one with outer space and nothingness."

"I can't say that I'm crazy, you know, about watching this. I don't like the person who I was back at this time, and-and, uh... I think I had all my priorities in the wrong places and I think if I were to spend to much time playin guitar as I did picking out stupid shorts and stupid hats and stupid, you know, overcoats, I would've... I would've been able to write some good songs, you know? I can't watch this version of myself and be at all happy about it. I want to... I want to strangle myself when I see this video. I was 18 years old. 18-year-old that deserved to be slapped upside his head."

"I guess this is the first time in a video that I ever showed my arms since my arms have been scarred, 'cause my arms are-are pretty badly scarred. I guess people are always wondering so I might as well say that, um, that the way that my arms got the way that they look, um, is was from abcesses, which came from shooting huge amounts of drugs. The results could have been a lot worse, so I'm happy to have the scars from a period of my life where I was living destructively, just as a... as a sign of what I've been through. And, uh, these days, I-I'm, you know, being healthy and taking care of my body is so important to me. But looking at it here, is seems like my arms have gotten better since then, so... That's nice to see."

"Pagers are my life--I try to get them in to our music as much as possible."

"Well, I don't even know how to drive in this life, so I'm pretty far from ever having the life of being a stuntdouble. I liked- I had an Evil Knievel doll when i was a kid, that's about it!"

"A child has this relationship to a creative force, you know? Yeah, your parents gradually, you know, they gradually shove your face in the concrete, and so do your teachers and school system and…everything’s working against you, but…but…but the force of creativity nature is not working against you - it’s right there for you, at any time! You just…you know, you just have to be ready not to judge yourself and to be open to whatever’s gonna come through you and to-to be ready to not…to not…eeeh to not judge what comes through, but be alright with it, whatever it is, cause it’s just the universe of expressing yourself."

"I think any music of any worth has been done by people who were very interested in the internal process of their soul and their mind that's taking place while they're writing music."

"In your pussy I'm cumming And I love you, and always had to Thank God I found you"

"The curtains were made for moving Cause you know sometimes you're not always there"

"I've been in pain hope it doesn't show I've been insane well the time is slow"

"You’re pushing me away to decay like the day that I loved"

"I've never been very smart but I connect you with your shadow"

"I fail to do What I'm trying I've been these walls And everyone who dies Hears other times"

"All around they is to feel and watch you they make patterns to peel the sound"

"You don't throw your life away Going Inside You get to know who's watching you And besides you resides in your body"

"Dream that you died It takes you out of your mind The black walls of space Take me all the way"

"You know this moment in time Is all my life Every day is each day that's passed Every person alive is everyone's who's died"

"I guide my fate And what it's good for There's no telling It's blood It's a flood"

"Dedicating all of before to now emphasizing these things that won't allow"

"I have seen the world enough I've drowned in my thoughts alot I canceled heaven I concede"

"Well, I don't need protection One life begins, another dies Bad timing I won't last"

"I'm dreading the time that is not near As a man on a cross I have no fear I can't believe these words I'm saying You've got to feel your lines"

"A slave in the fields one night He's running along Gets far enough to be a free man And he's feeling so strong"

"Everything is eternal Nothingness does not exist No thing has ever become nothing And nothing has never become something What is has always been and will always be"

"I got one entire song from fortune cookies (Land of Sunshine). On another one, I took words from different Frank Sinatra songs and pasted them together. Another one, I was just driving around and there was a piece of paper on the ground, so I stole it."

"Puffy's the only guy who's jealous. "All drummers want to be singers. I think it's a myth that the singer needs to be the focus. Bands perpetuate that myth. With somebody like Sebastian Bach it makes sense. Look at him. He could be in an Avon ad."

"It's (RV) about a slob sitting around who doesn't do anything. I kind of identify with it."

"Big Jim is over and out, as far as I am concerned."

"Trey Spruance didn't want to tour for ages. And Dean Menta has always been our guitar-roadie during Angel Dust, and I remember him playing fantastically during soundchecks. During each gig, he was watching from the side of the stage, seeing Big Jim play stuff that he could play better."

"There's a lot of positive stuff to say about him... Why can't I think of any now? (laughs) Oh, here's something positive: Big Jim's best trait of character was that he has always been himself... which was his worst trait of character at the same time."

"Oh, have you seen Beavis and Butt-Head when they watch one of our videos and Beavis goes: 'These guys sound just like the Chili Peppers?' As if I haven't heard that one before!""

"Recently, a girl chained herself to me with hand-cuffs after a gig, just because I refused to talk to her. I politely declined, though. I am a well-bred boy. I don't want to be too specific, but... it got pretty ugly."

"Despite the aural onslaught, King (For A Day) is not an assault I think it's us being us, more than anything. I think we finally had the resources to be us on this record."

"Revenge is good. I think revenge is healthy too, and if you can use music in that way, a sort of therapeutic way for yourself, it can't do any harm. So if King (For A Day...Fool For A Lifetime) is angry in any way, it's angry in a random, chaotic, healthy way. Like the guy who goes into a building, shoots a bunch of holes in the wall and then leaves. He didn't kill anybody."

"We just wanna be the happy bums that we are. That's all."

"A young tenor player was complaining to me that Coleman Hawkins made him nervous. Man, I told him Hawkins was supposed to make him nervous! Hawkins has been making other sax players nervous for forty years!"

"I keep reverting (to Duke Ellington), he to me is the greatest ever and my favorite jazz philosopher, as such."

"There's no future without the past and anybody who doesn't really understand where jazz has come from has no right to try to direct where it's going."

"Julian Adderley's nickname "Cannonball" was derived from "cannibal," which he was dubbed in high school because of his large appetite. But the alto player also had a voracious hunger for music, which showed in his inventive improvisations, especially on Miles Davis's watershed album Kind of Blue and Adderley's remarkable Blue Note release Somethin' Else."

"We do not find happiness by being assertive. We don't find happiness by running over people because we see what we want and they are in the way of that happiness so we either abandon them or we smash them. The Scriptures don't teach us to be assertive. The Scriptures teach us—and this is remarkable—the Scriptures teach us to be submissive. This is not a popular idea."

"You guys are all into that born again thing, which is great. We do need to be born again, since Jesus said that to a guy named Nicodemus. But if you tell me I have to be born again to enter the kingdom of God, I can tell you that you just have to sell everything you have and give it to the poor, because Jesus said that to one guy too…[And he paused in the awkward silence.] But I guess that’s why God invented highlighters, so we can highlight the parts we like and ignore the rest."

"Never forget what Jesus did for you. Never take lightly what it cost Him. And never assume that if it cost Him His very life, that it won't also cost you yours."

"So go out and live real good and I promise you'll get beat up real bad. But, in a little while after you're dead, you'll be rotted away anyway. It's not gonna matter if you have a few scars. It will matter if you didn't live."

"It's so funny being a Christian musician. It always scares me when people think so highly of Christian music, Contemporary Christian music especially. Because I kinda go, I know a lot of us, and we don't know jack about anything. Not that I don't want you to buy our records and come to our concerts. I sure do. But you should come for entertainment. If you really want spiritual nourishment, you should go to church...you should read the Scriptures."

"I had a prof one time... He said, "Class, you will forget almost everything I will teach you in here, so please remember this: that God spoke to Balaam through his ass, and He has been speaking through asses ever since. So, if God should choose to speak through you, you need not think too highly of yourself. And, if on meeting someone, right away you recognize what they are, listen to them anyway.""

"I’m all the time being asked by people, ‘How do ya feel closer to God.’ And I kinda always want to say ‘I don’t know.’ When I read the lives of most of the great saints they didn’t necessarily feel very close to God. When I read the Psalms I get the feeling like David and the other Psalmists felt quite far away from God for most of the time. Closeness to God is not about feelings, closeness to God is about obedience… I don’t know how you feel close to God. And no one I know that seems to be close to God knows anything about those feelings either. I know if we obey occasionally the feeling follows, not always, but occasionally. I know that if we disobey we don’t have a shot at it."

"That’s one of the things I love about being single, everybody always goes ‘Oh, you’re single what a tragedy.’ And I go ‘Well, yeah, from about ten to two each evening it is a tragedy but that times a tragedy for most married people as well.’ One of the great advantages of being single is you can still pick up hitch hikers, if you are married you don’t want to get, you know, slit or anything, cause you have a family to support. If you single and you die it doesn’t really matter so you are free to do what you really want to do. I love that!"

"It starts off so beautifully and then at the end of that Psalm, the last verse of that Psalm is “How very blessed is the man who dashes the little one’s heads against the rocks.” This is not the sort of scripture you read at a pro-life meeting. But it’s in there none the less. Which is the thing about the Bible that’s why it always cracks me up when people say ‘Well in Dududududududududududududu it says’ you kinda go ‘Wow it says a lot of things in there.’ Proof texting is a very dangerous thing. I think if we were given the scriptures it was not so that we could prove that we were right about everything. If we were given the scriptures it was to humble us into realizing that God is right and the rest of us are just guessing. Which is what makes them so much fun to read, especially if you are not a fundamentalist."

"And this is what I have come to think: That if I want to identify fully with Jesus Christ, whom I claim to be my Savior and Lord the best way that I can do that is to identify with the poor. This I know will go against the teachings of all the popular evangelical preachers. But they’re just wrong. They’re not bad, they’re just wrong. Christianity is not about building an absolutely secure little niche in the world where you can live with your perfect little wife and your perfect little children in your beautiful little house where you have no gays or minority groups anywhere near you. Christianity is about learning to love like Jesus loved and Jesus loved the poor and Jesus loved the broken."

"Bear in mind, children, that they listen to you because you are kids—not because you are right. That's how our Father listens to us … We never understand what we're praying, and God, in His mercy, does not answer our prayers according to our understanding, but according to His wisdom."

"Yes, it's embarrassing to be born again, but imagine how embarrassing it must have been to be born the first time. At least this time you get to wear clothes!"

"We are not saved because we're good. We're good because we're saved."

"I think a lot of American people are infatuated with God, but we don't really love Him, and they don't really let Him love them. Being loved by God is one of the most painful things in the world. It's also the only thing that can bring us salvation. And it's like everything else that is really wonderful, there's a little bit of pain in it, little bit of hurt."

"I think it's very hard to allow God to break us. I think it's very hard to be broken. And I think that who the Lord loves He chastens, and that if we'll never be broken we'll never be saved. And that God doesn't break us because He hates us, or because He's angry at us, but we have to be broken, just like you have to break a horse."

"I think, you know, the thing everybody really wants to know anyway is not what the theory of relativity is, but I think what we all really want to know anyways, is whether we're loved or not."

"The Bible is such an interesting book to me, because it says so many things that you can't really follow it all, I don't think, can you? So I guess that's why God invented highlighters, so we could find the parts we especially like and mark them up and just follow that, cause I think if you follow any of it, you're doing pretty good, except for the part - my favorite part - did you know the most reiterated command in the whole Bible is the command to sing? Now there must be a reason for that. And uh, that's why I sing. I don't really enjoy it, I think it's hard work. I like writing, but I sing because I figure if you find a command that easy to follow you should do it a whole lot. Cause the rest of them are kinda rough, except the first command, the one to be fruitful and multiply. Most people I know have trouble not keeping that command. That's the thing that cracks me up about you know, proof-texting too. Everyone's proof-texting this book about Christ and Christ Himself said, you know, you search the Scriptures to find life, and you're not gonna find it there. But no one underlined that part, not even my folks, because we live in a time when we have come to believe that there are answers... and I don't know why we believe that. And even more worrisome is I'm not even sure why we ever came to believe that questions are all that important."

"Don't try to get even, don't waste a lot of time trying to get even with each other. Because you never really do. Our ancestors thought if they ate of the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, that they would be like God. The truth was, not only did they not find out good from evil, but they also were unable to know God after that. Not only were they unable to know God, they were unable to know each other. Not only were they unable to know each other, they were unable to know themselves. And that is our, that is our heritage, folks."

"You shouldn't be trapped in the failures of other people, you know? Some of you are so scared of going out, you go hang out with anybody. But you ought to go out there with God, He listens, and listens 24 hours a day. You keep your television on, you surround yourself with friends, but you're scared of God. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of all wisdom. Never lose your reverence for Him. God is nothing to be joking about, but perfect love casts out fear."

"Friends, don't be afraid to go home. The Heavenly Father is waiting. Not because He wants to give you a whipping. Not because He wants to rub your nose in your failures, but because He had a Son who was a composite failure. He had a Son who tried to have this great ministry, had thousands of followers. His Son chose for Himself, He had twelve people on His staff. In three years' time He had managed to alienate every person in one way or another. He died His Father's Son, stricken with grief, so overloaded with guilt that He had to look away, His Father could not look at Him."

"Sometimes I am tempted to believe that I am better than anybody because I know Him. And then I remember that, I don't know him because I was smart enough to figure out some riddle. And I don't know him because I was good enough to ascend into heaven on my own and shake hands with him and meet him. Of all the things that make God awesome, the most awesome thing in the world that I can imagine from a god is that one who would be holy, and one that would be just,... and one that would be innocent and beautiful, and would have no need of me... that someone like that could love me is amazing. And uh, that does not make me a good person; but it makes Him a great God!"

"My theory is that for those of us who are too weak to remain single, God gives us a spouse. For those of us who are too hung up to handle marriage, God gives us celibacy. So, pick your weakness. Pick your poison, I guess. But anyway, for those of you who do choose to be in love and stuff, go for it."

"I remember, you know, you go to these parties on Saturday night and people would say, about 8:00 on Sunday morning "Whoa, I have to go - I gotta get to church!" People would say, "Why do you want to go to church, all those hypocrites." And I say, "Look, why do I want to stay here with all you hypocrites?"I never knew why going to church made you a hypocrite. They'd say because you go to church and you're all "Holy, Holy, Holy" for two or three hours, and then you go home and sin. I'd say "exactly!" For two or three hours you're doing pretty good! Maybe the problem isn't that you go to church, maybe the problem is that you go home! I never understood why going to church made you a hypocrite either, because nobody goes to church because they're perfect. If you've got it all together, you don't need to go. You can go jogging with all the other perfect people on Sunday morning Every time you go to church, you're confessing again to yourself, to your family, to the people you pass on the way there, to the people who will greet you there, that you don't have it all together. And that you need their support. You need their direction. You need some accountability, you need some help."

"I'm going to say to you what the angels said to every character in the Bible that they encountered, except for Mary, the mother of Jesus. They said "Don't be afraid." We've got a little while to go yet in this life, and it's a scary thing, but don't be afraid. Be of good cheer. He has overcome the world. And He has chosen to dwell within us. And we ain't all that big a deal, but our Savior is. He will walk with us through this life, and when it's over, He will raise us up again, and take us to be where He is. Not because of what we've done, but because of who He is. Because of the love He has for us."

"I don’t believe that God chose you, and blessed you so that you could heap those blessings up upon yourself. I believe God chose you, and you, and you, and every one of you others because He wants to make a difference in this world. And you know what? what I think is scary about God is He didn’t come up with any ‘Plan B.’ That He left the Church here, and the Church is the only group of people, and the Church is the only institution in the world that can bring about a change. This government cannot do it, so stop depending on the government. Educational systems cannot do it, so stop trusting educational systems. The Church was chosen by God to make a difference."

"“And you know what people, you ain’t gonna make a difference by buildin’ more bombs. And you ain’t gonna make a difference by puttin’ on more make-up and showin’ up on more television shows. And you’re not gonna make a difference by havin’ the loudest P.A., or the biggest crowd at your concerts. You’re gonna make a difference when you lay down your life, and in complete submission to God, choose to die with Him, in service, to other people...“For so many people that I know, Christianity is this matter of – it has everything to do with morals. ‘Christianity is a religion about morals.’ And they will even talk about Jesus, and they will say ‘Kids need to know about Jesus so that they – so that they won’t, uh – smoke, drink, or dance, or go with girls who do,’ and all that kind of thing, and I kinda go, ‘That’s not why people need to know about Jesus.’ The only reason – the only possible excuse for talking about Jesus is because—we need a Savior.""

"Our whole culture in this country now is so conformist. I don't even meet that many freaks any more."

"I think it's interesting being American, the expectations for an American guy, and the image that has to be projected. 'Oh, I can't wear pink,' that kind of stuff. There's none of that in Europe."

"We had one night where I wanted a bunch of percussion noises at the end of song. We went into this room with three cases of percussion. Everybody just grabbed different shakers and things and was just throwing them around. A few of the guys in the band got a little carried away and I just remember looking up and somebody was running into a wall. Another guy was leaping head first about three of four feet in the air. But other than that it was pretty sedated."

"I think I gave indications early on that mine wasn't just going to be a commercial, er, career. If that were the case, then the first record would have been 10 versions of 'Loser.' I always thought it would be interesting if there was no such thing as gold and platinum records, or record deals, and people were just making music. What would the music sound like?"

"I don't need to cry so much. I think whatever you let loose with crying, I let loose with singing. I tend to be the one who wants... I'm trying to say this without sounding too touchy-feely. I'm usually the one who's better at comforting the person who's crying, you know?"

"I'm not good at the protocols of dating. [laughs] I'm not really experienced in that. My girlfriend is my second or third girlfriend. I think in the past none of us really knew when we were "dating"-we were just hanging out and doing things. I didn't go to high school so I missed the prom."

"I never really had them. I always get the eccentric kids who dress funny and sit and write poetry for three months in their bedrooms... ...I was going to see tons of shows when I was a teenager, so if I was a girl, would that have made me a groupie? If I wanted to shake Thurston Moore's hand or something?"

"I have a fear of heights, so falling off something very tall. But I've conquered a good amount of my fears. I guess most people would have the fear of getting up in front of a large audience of people and making a fool of themselves. I've gotten over that."

"My mother was mistrustful of the education system, so it was all right with her if we didn't go to school. She was taking us to Truffaut films, and I was busy getting through a Knut Hamsun book or something, so she felt satisfied we weren't wasting our lives watching The Brady Bunch. Because of where we lived, I would've had to go to Belmont High, so the year I was supposed to start high school I tried to get into the High School for the Performing Arts, which had just opened. I sent them a tape of me playing blues guitar and some short stories I'd written, but they didn't want me."

"About a year ago, I started seeing these ads in the paper for 'Laser Vaginal Rejuvenation'. First it was a little ad. The next week, it was twice as big. And after a month, it was a full page-it just took over. Something in that triggered a bunch of associations and projections. Like, what kind of activities do you have to engage in to get to the point where you need to bring a laser into the equation?"

"You'd have to be a total idiot to say, 'I'm the slacker-generation guy. This is my generation.' I'd be laughed out of the room in an instant. I didn't even connect ['Loser'] at all to that kind of message until they were playing it on the radio and I heard it, and they said "This is the slacker anthem," and I thought, 'Oh shit, that sucks.' It's not some anguished transcendental 'cry of a generation.' It's just sitting in someone's living room eating pizza and Doritos."

"I think it would be great to have a mall that looked like stores but you weren't selling things. You were just going to hang out or do things. Or if somebody bought a mall and turned it into a house that people could kind of come to and you could build rooms, and it's all orange furniture. Or you could just build environments. Reclaim a mall just in the name of aesthetics or to make something beautiful or something that has no real purpose. Wouldn't that be amazing?"

"I try not to obsess about recording. I'm definitely the one who will leave all the mistakes-to have that balance between what's undone and done. I try to move on to the next thing. I have friends who have been working on the same song for five, six years. They just won't let the songs go."

"There are so many elements flying in so many different directions that you really have to go with what feels like instinctively. The nature of the universe is fairly whimsical and nonsensical. In the most somber, beatific peacefulness there's complete chaos and maniacal laughter. I think music that doesn't reflect that is boring."

"Oh, the tragedy and the anguish. You just gotta Rage Against the Appliance, man. The toast is burning and you just gotta rip it out and free it before it fills the house with smoke. Rage Against the Toaster."

"We played a gig in the Swiss Alps at a snowboarding convention. Red Bull-this energy sports-fuel drink-sponsored the whole thing. It has some ingredient believed to be bull-testicle extract. We went way off our tour route, had to take two planes and missed a night's sleep. We got up there and there's no snow-it's all mud. You couldn't walk. You'd step and then be up to your knee in mud. So you had several thousand disgruntled snowboarders tanked up to the max on bull-testicle extract. Of course, for some reason, these strapping brutes were made to wait out in the mid and the rain before coming into the tent for the show. When we get up to play, I see this forty-foot gap between us and the audience-they still managed to nail us with empty cans of Red Bull. After a few songs, I wasn't really playing my guitar, I was using it to bay cans back into the crowd of disgruntled sports enthusiasts. It felt like we were A Flock of Seagulls opening for Napalm Death."

"I remember being really shocked after Mellow Gold came out and going on tour, and all these kids were there. It totally disturbed me. Who are all these young people? I'd been playing Mississippi John Hurt covers in coffee shops to a bunch of thirty-, forty-, fifty-year olds. Then all of a sudden there were these teenagers."

"I recently saw The Last American Virgin, one of those early-'80s coming-of-age movies. And the actors, they look like kids you grew up with! Today's teen movies, I didn't know anybody who looked like that. The standards now are so unbelievably high."

"One of the reasons I'm a musician is because music isn't divisive. It's a medium where you don't have to abide by divisions. The whole idea is anarchy and the best music just doesn't give a fuck. And too much music is just so conservative these days. So I really don't want to be careful about anything. And there's so much music that's trying to be offensive these days, trying to be aggressive and abrasive. But it's just cheap and manipulative. So if I can offend someone in a good way and challenge their belief system, then I think that's positive. I mean, I wonder what their problem with it is? I don't have a problem. Wanda Coleman doesn't have a problem with me singing like that."

"But people like to say, Oh, it's in the blood. But art comes from nowhere. It comes from a vague, scary place. It's scary because you don't know when it's coming or if it will ever come again. It's this Other."

"There were definitely lyrics and they were very meaningful. I think."

"Teach we must, for we owe all that we are to all those who have been and all that we have to those who are yet to come ...if they but ask!"

"What better place than this? What better choice than us?"

"People often ask me, "Jack, you're old. How do you manage to get out of the house and be so outraged and hop up and down so very often?" And of course, I respond, "Could you lend me ten bucks so I can buy some drugs?""

"My older friends say, "I was in a punk band once, and we used to be pretty outraged. We would get pretty angry, we'd get a stomp going or something, we would rally against Reagan, or other elected officials. But now I am an older man, and I have some responsibilities, so I really cannot be excited. I appreciate Kurt Cobain, and I'm excited about all those bands that seem very angry, but—why would you keep doing this after all these years?" And I say, "Because I still hate you and I'm trying to prove to you that you're wrong." Because, really, if you're bored and you're listless, you just need to get yourself an enemy."

"There's a shop on the next corner, North Six, between Wythe and Berry? I'd like you all to go smash it up. Now, if anyone asks you who told you to do this, I want you to keep mum. It was Franz."

"I know we live in troubled times, my friends, I know things which once stood up suddenly don't stand up anymore. I know that innocent people shopping or buying gas are often shot down, shot down for no reason. And it makes a nation nervous. Now, personally, I like the nation to be nervous. And in these nervous times, sometimes people come up to me, and they say, "Perhaps, Jack, you should tone down your rhetoric a bit. Perhaps, the stuff you say in between songs might be construed as, well, not very patriotic. Well, actually, Jack, you might get yourself in some big trouble." And I say to myself, "Oh! Trouble is my business, friend." In these uncertain times, it's not a good idea to give up on your values, and change your mind about the things you hold dear. It's not. I want to talk about someone who fell pretty damn hard, and this song is called "I Shot President Reagan, and I'm Gonna Do It Again and Again and Again and Again!""

"What do you think makes a good rock front man? Shamelessness, I’d imagine."

"It was great the way we changed the mind of the nation and fascism was defeated and all the troops were home by Christmas."

"It is every singer's ambition, whether they acknowledge it or not, to croon."

"Interviewer says "Yeah, and I watched that but I actually was kind of like, terrified by the intensity of your fans and I was wondering if the intensity of your fans ever kind of scares you? I hear that they have a bunch of rules for what dances to do during certain songs…I was like ‘Oh God’.""

"Everything's going to be okay, even though it's all terribly wrong."

"Punk's an attitude. Punk's not three-chord rock. If you want to listen to three chord rock, there's southern rock."

"Interviewer says "How do you become a member of the World/Inferno Friendship Society?""

"Interviewer says "Maybe you can give us some chores that have to be done like Hercules had to do ten of them so maybe we could do ten of them""

"You should live your life with an emphasis on accruing experiences and becoming cooler."

"What's the most important thing in the world? Walking the walk."

"All you have to do is put all other concerns aside and your fondest desire will come true. Unfortunately, 'all other concerns' includes your health, financial well-being, interpersonal relationships, and often any inkling of why you had this desire in the first place. Good luck!"

"Trouble is a great deal of fun, and crimes committed without malice are usually forgiven among peers."

"Is it better to look classy or act classy? Act. But one follows the other."

"Money should never be the reason you ever do or don't do anything. I haven't paid rent in 3 months."

"Have you noticed that bank tellers are almost always very attractive? Is it because they're on display back there behind the glass so close and yet so far? Or is it like bartenders they have so much of what we want?"

"If I am not doing something illicit, I feel absolutely naked."

"Where do you hear the songs? In the space between wake and passing out, the hiss down the left of the dial, the faces of the kids when we pull up to the show, in answering machine hang up messages, in glasses colliding, transmissions whining, where the music doesn't belong—where it lives. Everywhere, it's all I hear."

"My favorite wine is usually whatever is right in front of me."

"Personally, I've been hearing all my life about the Serious Philosophical Issues posed by life extension, and my attitude has always been that I'm willing to grapple with those issues for as many centuries as it takes."

"This is stupid. I now have stupid all over me."

"So many people’s school experience contains at least one instance of being looked down upon because they didn’t care for one or more of the sacred mutant outcroppings of High Modernism, and they concluded from this that Literature is all about impenetrable stuff that they don’t like. That damn Hemingway with his crazy free verse."

"As far as “plot” goes, as I get older I more and more suspect that “plot” is really being used, in the many incarnations of this argument, as a placeholder for a whole cloud of qualities found (or not found) in certain narratives, some of which actually constitute “plot” and many of which do not. What first led me to suspect this is the fact that many of the sternest exponents of “I want novels to have plots, dammit” are also demonstrably fans of, for instance, quite a few Robert A. Heinlein novels whose plots can barely be detected even by advanced scientific equipment. (Not just later Heinlein, either; go back and look at Beyond This Horizon). As it happens, I like some of those books, too, and what I learn from them, and from thousands of other books, is that what matters isn’t the presence of a carefully-engineered, structurally sound “plot.” What matters is whether a book entrances us into reading it or forces us to decode it — and “plot” is just one of several methods of getting us into the reading trance. It’s a good method. It’s not the only one."

"Do we really have to wander around apologizing for enjoying plot, just because James Wood and a few dozen other arch-aesthetes sniff at it? It's like being careful not to sing pop songs in the shower because some guy in the local alt-weekly is a music snob."

"Book publishing was never a heaven “run by editors”, and it is by no means today a hell “run by accountants.” If our “sole interest” was “instant profit,” not only would we never do any number of the things we actually do every day, we probably wouldn’t be in book publishing at all."

"Forget me not, or I'll forget myself."

"When I go around in America and I see the bulk of the white people, they do not feel oppressed; they feel powerless... We see the physical genocide that they are attempting to inflict upon our lives, and we understand the psychological genocide that they have already inflicted upon their own people."

"There are insane people who wish to rule the world. They wish to continue to rule the world on violence and repression, and we are all the victims of that violence and repression."

"They are going to become more brutal. They are going to become more oppressive."

"We have to understand who we are and where we fit in the natural order of the world because our oppressor deals in illusions. They tell us that it is power, but it is not power. They may have all the guns and they may have all the racist laws and judges, and they may control all the money, but that is not power. These are imitations of power and they are only ‘power’ because in our minds we allow it to be power."

"This oppressor, this machine that has gone mad and run amok, it is berserk. They keep telling us, "progress.” They keep telling us “face reality.” Well, let’s deal with reality. Reality is the Earth can no longer take this attack. We can no longer allow this Thing to continue when it’s polluting the air, it’s polluting the water, polluting our food. They pollute the air, they pollute the water, they pollute our food, they pollute our minds."

"Our obligations and loyalty should not be to a government that will not take care of our needs. Our obligations and loyalty should not be to a government that has proven time and time again that it is the enemy of the people unless the people are rich in dollars."

"The Earth gives us life, not the American government. The earth gives us life, not the multi-national corporate government. The Earth gives us life. We need to have the Earth. We must have it, otherwise our life will be no more. So we must resist what they do."

"Columbus, I guess it all did start with Columbus. ... To me he was like a virus, a disease. I spent a lot of time protesting, trying to figure out how to deal with this disease. I think we really need to put serious thought into understanding that we're dealing with a disease."

"It's like there's this predator energy on this planet, and this predator energy feeds upon the essence of the spirit, feeds upon the essence of the human being, the spirit. This predator energy can take fossil fuel and other resources out of the Earth, turn it into fuel, to run a machine system. But in order for there to be a need for that system, and in order for that system to work, they have to mine our minds to get at the essence of our spirit. In the same way the external mining takes place, it pollutes—we see now, people understand how it poisons the environment, the water, the air pollution—the mining of the essence, the mining of the spirit, mining our minds ... the pollution from that is all the neurotic, distorted, insecure behavior patterns that we develop. That's the pollution. Because in order for this predatory system, this disease, to work, we must not be able to use our minds in a clear coherent manner. Because if we use our minds in a clear coherent manner, we will not accept the unacceptable."

"Sometimes when it rains, it's not that simple, when the sky has reasons to cry."

"The past is more than a memory."

"Every human being is a raindrop. And when enough of the raindrops become clear and coherent they then become the power of the storm."

"I grew up as a teenager listening to a really lot of heavy stuff. I was definitely a Slayer kid and Testament and the harder metal. I was definitely not a glam rocker."

"At some point along the way, people had introduced me to bands like Depeche Mode and stuff that was on the softer side of electronic music and that completely intrigued me because of the sonic capabilities and possibilities. I got intrigued with that and then somewhere along the way somebody handed me a Skinny Puppy record and I think that changed my musical life."

"...primarily when I write, I use guitars and organic instruments because that's easier to write to but at the end of the day, the electronic side of things, that's my true passion."

"(The story behind the name Celldweller) is hard to trace back completely but I guess in 1992 sometime, I wrote a song called 'Helldweller' and my studios and even places I have lived have traditionally been in basements. In cellars, so to speak. I am also a fairly introverted guy and I hardly ever come out. It was almost a joke initially from family and friends calling me a cell dweller or a cellar dweller. It evolved into Celldweller although that name holds more significance than that. Celldweller is more symbolic of an internal bondage, being restricted and retained internally so the name has many meanings. At the end of the day, it rolls off the tongue very easily so there it is."

"...the most recent tracks I've written on (the debut CD) were ... Frozen' and 'I Believe You."

"I didn’t quit that band because I wanted to. I quit that band because I had to. Because when people give you an ultimatum about your family, what are you going to do? But the problem was no one was being truthful at the time."

"But really we wanted to do something that was more kind of different than what most punk rock bands are doing right now, where they are all dressing in black and acting pissed or sad or wearing make-up. Its just not what we are into."

"I'm going to usher in this entire new culture of the youth, obsessed with the future."

"Every breath I take is a tribute to John Kerry."

"Tom’s late-'90s/early 2000s tone was fairly simple—usually distorted, with clean breaks and not many effects. His playing, whilst not complicated, was incredibly effective. He let chords ring out at the start of verses, employed palm-muting, helped bring the dynamics down so that bridges and choruses stood out more, played jangly single-note riffs, used octave melodies to counter the vocals, etc."

"You can be a jazz player and be respected by musicians, but the rest of the world doesn’t care. [...] We’re going to play a game: name a jazz player that means something."

"We can't be The Beatles. I can't shine their shoes. I can't sing as well as Paul or John. I can't write those kind of songs. But they would die in my armour and my eight-inch platform heels, and Paul can't spit fire, so there you have it."

"Elvis is the king of rock and roll, who made white kids shake there shackle."

"Being a Jew, you realize your strongest weapon is your mind."

"I think Prince was heads, hands and feet about all the rest of them, I thought he left (Michael) Jackson in the dust. Prince was way beyond that. But how pathetic that he killed himself. Don't kid yourself, that's what he did. Slowly, I'll grant you … but that's what drugs and alcohol is: a slow death."

"The most important thing in life is to be a selfish asshole. Do what you want, piss off everyone and stop hanging with the guys because they're not going to get you money or sex."

""Earth has never been in better shape…I know — climate change and a polarised political thing — but there are no more world wars. I mean, imagine what London looked like 60 years ago. This is the best of times. Unemployment in the United States is the lowest it’s been in 50 years — 5-0…More people are working. More people are making more money. Unions are more powerful." (2019)"

"My mother is probably the wisest person I've ever known. She's not schooled, she's not well read. But she has a philosophy of life that makes well-read people seem like morons."

"My skin is more beautiful than yours. I would be quite more popular in jail if I so chose."

"The notion is that if you want to welcome me with open arms, I'm afraid you're also going to have to welcome me with open legs."

"You know why I'm pulling your leg? Because I can't touch it from where I am."

"You can't argue with facts and figures. Either people want it, in which case they pay for it, or it's two guys sitting around at the Plaza having a discussion, which means nothing. I mean, Titanic. I wasn't crazy about the movie. But you know what? I'm gonna shut up, because the people have spoken. End of story!"

"KISS is the number-one American band in gold-record sales. In the world, only the Beatles and the Stones are ahead of us. Every other band should be wiping my ass. The line forms over there to the left."

"Prostitute yourself. As far as I'm concerned, that's even braver than waiting for the public to catch on."

"Anybody who picks up a guitar and tells you that there's some inner message that they're trying to convey . . . it's nonsense. They're not being honest. The reason they're doing this is they wanna get lots of chicks and they don't want to work for a living."

"People say, "I want to get laid a lot and make lots of money." That's not the right order."

"A whore, in my estimation, has more credibility than a wife, and I'll tell you why. A wife is supposed to marry you for love. A whore is not there for love, she's there to service you. Now, the difference between them is a whore, before she does her work, will tell you exactly what it is. She'll tell you, "Blow job? This'll cost you seventy-five dollars. This is not love, and after I'm done I never want to see you again." Full disclosure is what they call it in court. A wife will tell you shit. A wife will tell you nothing. She's about to marry you. If you get divorced, she's going to take 50 percent of your gross pretax dollars and try to get more. Now, before you get married, if you dare bring up the notion, "By the way, let's just be completely honest with each other, what happens if we break up?" she will cry and tell you, "That's so unromantic." You know who's more credible? The whore."

""You can't buy love with money." Only a poor person says that."

"You shall not covet thy neighbor's wife? Well, how about if she goddamn covets me? What do you think about that?"

"“I think I know it all, relatively speaking.”"

"My mother was 14 when she was in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. My mother’s alive and well, but only because of America. Without America’s military, the world would be in deep… fill-in-the-blank. I’m forever grateful for that."

"I’ve known Donald (Trump) for a few decades, and what you can say without argument is that he’s a good father. His kids have turned out really well. There’s nothing bad you can say about that."

"Like any large organization, there are going to be some bad people. Many people go to church; not every priest is a good guy. But you . Wounded Warrior is an important organization, and all the various vet groups are important because, shamefully, we don’t have an amendment to the Constitution that guarantees if you volunteer to serve your country, and risk life and limb, that you’re even going to get a job, so that you can feed your family. It’s pathetic. ‘Hey, thanks a lot for risking your life, and you’ve been wounded. Good luck out there!’ The men and women of our military may not expect to get rich and famous, but at least give them a job for God’s sake, so they can feed their family!"

"The best philanthropy is anonymous charity. When you’re doing it for the right reasons, and not to tell everyone how nice you are. That’s self-aggrandizement. That’s also OK: if you want credit, that’s OK. But the higher giving is anonymous giving."

"What is soul? I don't know! Soul is a hamhock in your cornflakes... Soul is a joint rolled in toilet paper."

"…now that I'm really pursuing being a jazz trumpet player. I’m working really hard on it every day, every day, and it's difficult, you know, and I'm I'm a student… I’m humbled. I am humbled…as I study this craft. The other day I was… I was in New York and I was playing my record for a group of people including a bunch of really good jazz musicians who were there, and I'm kind of insecure around jazz musicians you know, I'm like, I'm not that good, you know, and I was talking to my friend John Lurie and … I said I hope they they weren't like looking down their nose at me, you know what I mean, and he's like “what the fuck are you talking about, you can play man, you're a player, you're a musician” and I realized I was like because of that kind of shit I felt when I was a kid around the jazz musicians, and I admired them so much, and I felt I went to this other kind of music. I've always felt so insecure about it, you know, and I realized… I don't need to… especially… when I went to go make my record and I was playing with these great jazz musicians and I… was insecure with them… I was like, "God, I'm hope… they're not just doing it for a check and they're going to look down on me and think, oh, “he's a no playing fucking rock dude. He doesn't really understand.” …But and it wasn't like that at all …they’re like “we're all climbing this mountain of music”… Where you are in the fucking mountain, you got something to offer that… They were all just wanting to and sincerely… realize my vision with me. Mhm. you know, in the most beautiful way…it moved me like, and I’m just now in my life …conquering … all.. those feelings of inadequacy as a musician, you know, and and just wanting to work and be as good as I can…I now I work more than ever, you know what I mean?"

"We're [the Red Hot Chili Peppers] jamming and that works really well. We don't talk much about songs or how songs should be constructed. We just start to play and see what happens, how they develop. We improvise a lot. We find a groove. We experiment and somehow it turns into music. The Koreans have influenced us a lot, through their loving attitude, evil dictatorship, and funky bass playing."

"The music industry, I've never been concerned with. I've been very fortunate that it has taken care of me. Like a baby being breast fed."

"I smell like vitamin C, rose-oil and old smelly socks."

"I love, I love, I love, killer whales, and I love mangos, and Iggy Pop too, I love Iggy Pop, and eating, getting up in the morning, and going swimming, and taking a good shit, and I love all of you too!"

"People that are uptight about the kiss on the magazine are the same people that are gonna be watching macho football players in tight pants wrestle around and slap each other on the butt and think it's the all russian macho thing to do."

"In Flea’s hands the Jazz Bass becomes both a rhythm and a lead instrument, a clean and a dirty one."

"[Flea is] one of the most versatile bassists around and willing to play with anybody, anywhere. Flea's played with the likes of Jane’s Addiction, Johnny Cash, and Tom Waits. Not to mention, he's also among rock's great characters and noted for his remarkable stage presence, clothed or not."

"Many a person has been saved from summer alcoholism, not to mention hypertoxicity, by Dostoyevsky."

"A good heavy book holds you down. It’s an anchor that keeps you from getting up and having another gin and tonic."

"A dog will make eye contact. A cat will, too, but a cat’s eyes don’t even look entirely warm-blooded to me, whereas a dog’s eyes look human except less guarded. A dog will look at you as if to say, “What do you want me to do for you? I’ll do anything for you.” Whether a dog can in fact, do anything for you if you don’t have sheep (I never have) is another matter. The dog is willing."

"In the beginning, Atlanta was without form, and void; and it still is."

"I do hope you realize that every time you use disinterested to mean uninterested, an angel dies."

"Any given generation gives the next generation advice that the given generation should have been given by the previous generation but now it's too late."

"A convention has to be something that more than one person is moved to take hold of. It's a convention to call your sweetheart "dumplin" or "honeybun." It would also be a convention to call her "gulag," if she would stand for it, which she won't, and why would you want to be around someone who would?"

"English is an outrageous tangle of those derivations and other multifarious linguistic influences, from Yiddish to Shoshone, which has grown up around a gnarly core of chewy, clangorous yawps derived from ancestors who painted themselves blue to frighten their enemies."

"Usage ain't always a matter of ought."

"I know, you want to make a citizen's arrest of anyone whose menu lists "Idaho potato baked in it's skin," but you can't."

"I have to be firm on this: unique is not to be modified. Adding very or absolutely is like putting a propeller on a rabbit to make him hop better. It won't work, and he won't be a rabbit anymore."

"People don't necessarily want or need to be done unto as you would have them do unto you. They want to be done unto as they want to be done unto."

"That's American English for you: more roots than a mangrove swamp."

"It's from a video game, idiot! (or possibly "It's from a video game idiot!")"

"It makes me laugh. The part I don't understand, the dude is trying to act like I went to his house and took it from his computer. I don't know him from a can of paint. I'm 15 years deep. That's how you attack a king? You attack moi? Come on, man. You got to come correct. You the laughing stock. People are like, "You can't be serious.""

"Sample and stole is two different things. Stole is like I walked in your house, watched you make it, stole your Pro Tools ... Sample is like you heard it somewhere, and you just sampled. Maybe you didn't know who it was by because it don't have the credits listed."

"There's no excuse to be bored. Sad, yes. Angry, yes. Depressed, yes. Crazy, yes. But there's no excuse for boredom, ever."

"You have a moral obligation to finish the job you said you would do."

"Adapt and overcome."

"A lot of people can forget about you in Los Angeles."

"Just because you are lucky does not mean you make good choices."

"What is this thing called love? This funny thing called love? Just who can solve this mystery? Why should it make a fool of me?"

"If you want to buy my wares Follow me and climb the stairs … Love for sale."

"There's an, oh such a hungry yearning burning inside of me."

"Oh, give me land, lots of land under starry skies above. Don't fence me in. Let me ride through the wide open country that I love Don't fence me in Let me be by myself in the evenin' breeze And listen to the murmur of the cottonwood trees Send me off forever but I ask you please Don't fence me in"

"I want to ride to the ridge where the west commences And gaze at the moon till I lose my senses I can't look at hobbles and I can't stand fences Don't fence me in"

"What moments divine, what rapture serene."

"Some Argentines, without means, do it, People say, in Boston, even beans do it. Let's do it, let's fall in love."

"The chimpanzees in the zoos do it, Some courageous kangaroos do it Let's do it, let's fall in love. I'm sure giraffes on the sly do it, Even eagles as they fly do it, Let's do it, let's fall in love."

"In shallow shoals, English soles do it Goldfish in the privacy of bowls do it."

"Electric eels I might add do it, Though it shocks 'em I know..."

"The world admits bears in pits do it, Even Pekingeses at the Ritz do it, Let's do it, let's fall in love."

"If you want a future, darling, Why don't you get a past?"

"They say that spring Means just one thing To little lovebirds. We're not above birds, Let's misbehave."

"They say that bears Have love affairs And even camels, We're merely mammals Let's misbehave."

"I get no kick from champagne. Mere alcohol doesn't thrill me at all, So tell me why it should be true That I get a kick out of you?"

"Some get a kick from cocaine. I'm sure that if I took even one sniff That would bore me terrifically, too, Yet, I get a kick out of you."

"You're the smile On the Mona Lisa."

"In olden days a glimpse of stocking Was looked on as something shocking But now, Heaven knows, Anything goes."

"Good authors, too, who once knew better words Now only use four-letter words Writing prose — Anything goes."

"Too bad, I'm no poet, I happen to know it, But anyway Here's a roundelay I wrote last night about you..."

"You are my fav'rite star, My haven in heaven above, You are ev'rything I love."

"Sad times May follow your tracks, Bad times May bar you from Saks, Add times When Satan in slacks Breaks down your self control..."

"This rule I propose, Always have an ace in the hole. Always try to arrive at Having an ace some place private. Always have an ace in the hole."

"You're the pain in my — The hurricane in my — Supersensitive heart, dear. Still I love you, I know, And the reason is merely because You irritate me so!"

"Relax for a moment my Jerry Come out of your dark monastery While Venus is beaming above. Darling, let's talk about love."

"You'd be so nice to come home to You'd be so nice by the fire..."

"You'd be so nice, You'd be paradise To come home to and love."

"It must be fun to be you And play with love as you do To treat each new romance As merely one more dance Or just another book to glance through It must be fun to acquire Whatever heart you desire, And when you're bored with it To tear it in two, It must be fun to be you."

"Be a clown, be a clown, All the world loves a clown. Act the fool, play the calf, And you'll always have the last laugh."

"Wear the cap and the bells And you'll rate all the great swells. If you become a doctor, folks'll face you with dread. If you become a dentist, they'll be glad when you're dead. You get a bigger hand if you can stand on your head. Be a clown, be a clown, be a clown."

"Be the poor silly ass And you'll always travel first class. Give 'em quips, give 'em fun, And they'll pay to say you're A–1. If you become a farmer, you've the weather to buck. If become a gambler you'll be struck with your luck. But jack you'll never lack if you can quack like a duck. Be a clown, be a clown, be a clown."

"So kiss me Kate, Thou lovely loon, E'er we start on our honeymoon. Oh, kiss me, Kate, Darling devil divine, For now thou shall ever be mine."

"In a way no other songs of the period quite did, Porter's created a world. It was a between–the–wars realm of drop–dead chic and careless name–dropping insouciance. And it was a sexy place to be invited."

"The wit of his words depended on his ability to raise the audience immediately to his own level — and keep it there. The instant happiness that Porter gave his audience is the kind that becomes history."

"Yeah. Cole Porter, but he was taken."

"Scissors to Suburbia"

"No worse than a bad cold."

"I was the same kind of father as I was a harpist - I played by ear."

"Like the East Side tenement, our house was seldom without the sound of music or laughter or questions being asked or stories being told."

"Susan, an only child who never had any roots, and I, a lone wolf who got married 20 years too late, were adopted by the kids as much as they were by us."

"Many years ago a very wise man named Bernard Baruch took me aside and put his arm around my shoulder. "Harpo my boy," he said, "I'm going to give you three pieces of advice, three things you should always remember." My heart jumped and I glowed with expectation. I was going to hear the magic password to a rich, full life from the master himself. "Yes sir?" I said. And he told me the three things. I regret that I've forgotten what they were."

"If I'm trapped in a theatre, and a show starts disappointingly, I have a handy way of avoiding it: I fall asleep."

"Harpo, she's a lovely person. She deserves a good husband. Marry her before she finds one."

"O, Harpo Death and thy clanking harp, hear!"

"exclusively verbal humor have been conveyed by Harpo Marx, who with Charles Chaplin, Jimmy Savo, and Danny Kaye, ranks as a master artist of pantomime."

"It became such a hit that it superseded anything that any band had ever had. It was the first time that a so-called swing band played something melodic and still gave it a beat."

"You run into a party and [a] woman comes up to you. She's the most beautiful creature you ever saw — Ava Gardner — and says, "I like you and why don't we get together?" What are you going to say, "No"? You'd have to be an idiot. She was an incredible creature."

"My job is to play music, not politics, and my only obligation is to the people who pay to listen to me. I don't attempt to ram hackneyed, insipid tunes down the public's throat just because they've been artificially hypoed to the so-called 'hit' class. This policy of trying to maintain some vestige of musical integrity has, naturally, earned me enemies, people who think I'm a longhair, impressed with my own ability. Nothing could be farther from the truth. My faith in dance music — I refuse to call it swing — borders on the fanatic. I have the utmost respect for the many real musicians who are creating a new music as important as the classics, but I have no respect for musical clowns who lead an orchestra with a baton and a quip. However, more power to them if they can make it pay."

":Polly Vernon:: Do you miss Britney?"

":Justin Timberlake:: Umm, yeah, you know, days will go by when I miss... I miss the good things, I miss the good things. I'll leave it at that. Britney has always surprised me."

":Polly Vernon:: With what? Her honesty?"

":Justin Timberlake:: Ha! No, no, no, not with that. I think, the size of her heart. She has a big heart, a really big heart. That's always impressed me about her."

"How famous am I? No more famous than you.' Well, no, you are considerably more famous than I am. 'Says who? Fuck it. Kelly Osbourne's more famous than me."

"The vilest offender who truly believes, That moment from Jesus a pardon receives."

"“Give,” said the little stream, “Give, oh give, give, oh give,” As it hurried down the hill. “I am small, I know, but wherever I go The fields grow greener still.”"

"On! ye patriots to the battle. Hear Fort Moultrie's canon rattle. Then away, then away, then away to the fight! Go meet those Southern Traitors with iron will and should your courage falter boys, remember Bunker Hill. Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah! The stars and stripes forever! Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! As our fathers crushed oppression deal with those who breathe Secession. Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Though Beauregard and Wigfall. Their swords may whet. Just tell them Major Anderson. Has not surrendered yet. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! Is Virginia, too, seceeding? Washington's remains unheeding? Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Unfold our country's banner. In triumph there and let the rebels desecrate that banner if they dare. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! Volunteers, be up and doing. Still the good old path pursuing. Then away, then away, then away to the fight. Your sires, who fought before you have led the way. Then follow in their footsteps and be as brave as they. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever! On! ye patriots to the battle. Hear Fort Moultrie's cannon rattle then away, then away, then away to the fight. The star that lights our Union shall never set! Though fierce may be the conflict we'll gain the victory yet. Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Union shall not sever!"

"In fact, gory horror movies don't rank on the [list of] movies that I like. Good horror movies are great, but I just like good movies. I don't just watch grade Z garbage. That bores me to death."

"Dig through the ditches, and burn through the witches, I slam in the back of my Dragula."

"I sat reading in these chairs and felt somehow, in an abstract rather than a religious way, that suffering shapes you. Not only my own religious thought, but that of my ancestors, affected me in some way. The thing we have as Jews is that it’s a wonderfully abstract religion. Images are not allowed, so it’s welcome to abstract thought."

"I wouldn’t play it in public — you need different muscles, you can’t use the upper arm, just the fingers. But the sound has a glow, because the strings aren’t damped, as on a piano. I wanted to visit Bach’s sound world, then apply those ideas to the piano."

"In the Bronx, we had three synagogues on one block at 161st Street. My father was Orthodox and we went to the Sephardi one. Further along was the Conservative, the biggest. In between was the Ashkenazi shul. And guess who was their shabbos goy? Colin Powell!"

"I’m deeply grateful to be Jewish. I feel it’s enriched my life and I feel very strongly about Jewishness."

"With every experience in life, you have two choices: One, you can choose to enjoy and learn from the encounter, even if it is something you don't like. Two, you can struggle through the experience, blaming everyone and everything else around you the entire time. What if you were to view any unfavorable experience in a new way? What if you simply accepted the experience as momentary and learned what you could from it? Think how peaceful that experience would become."

"Your needs are your choice. Because they are your choice, this means you are not bound by them. You can choose to change your needs."

"How many times have you become very anxious when forced to wait? There are a million things to see. There are a million beautiful sounds to hear. Open your eyes, see--as if for the first time. Find peace in moments of waiting, and you will witness that all life can be perfectly beautiful."

"Desire is the base of all disharmony in this world."

"Although all human beings experience desires, all are not controlled by them. Those who are not controlled by desire maintain balance in their lives and can thereby attain higher levels of understanding."

"Spiritual mastery is never easy. It takes much more time and personal application than physical development does. Spirtual mastery, however, is the path we are all on. Some of us simply do not choose to believe it."

"Do I have to get naked people for you to remember my name? It's Lynn from Snot."

"I'm addicted. Period. Y'know, I mean like... And it's weird because so many of the population, so much of the population is addicted and err... Y'know, compulsive and impulsive... I'm really like... compulsive about shit... When I can't fix my head with... y'know, with a certain drug or whatever, I'll clean something up, y'know, or I'll, I get really like... fucking fidgety and uncomfortable and I get... I fly off the handle easy, y'know, and it's like... if it's not... if I'm not gorging myself on-, on-, on one thing, I'm fucking... I'm trying to fill that... that hole some other way, y'know what I mean? It's always this great feeling of need and it doesn't ne-, necessarily have to be of anything in particular, it's just something that you don't know what it is which drives you that much more insane sometimes... y'know, and that's what a lot of people today, uhm, suffer from, and a lot of people don't even realise it, y'know. I don't profess to know everything about it but, y'know... I don't know... I just, uh, know that there's that hole that needs to be filled and, uh, a lot of people die trying."

"Listen, smile, agree, and then do whatever the f**k you were gonna do anyway."

"It's like I've got a shotgun in my mouth with my finger on the trigger, and I like the taste of the gun metal."

"I have a really interesting political point of view, and it’s not always something I say too loud at dinner tables here, but you can’t go from a $2,000-a-night suite at La Mirage to a penitentiary and really understand it and come out a liberal. You can’t. I wouldn’t wish that experience on anyone else, but it was very, very, very educational for me and has informed my proclivities and politics ever since."

"By creating and associating and synergizing with Tony Stark and the Marvel Universe..and being a good company man but also being a little off kilter and being creative and then getting into all these other partnerships, it was a time when it’s like…[how] owners start looking like their pets…occasionally you would pull back from it and go, ‘Let me stop, let me get off the teet of this archetype and let me see where I stand.’ And you can feel really buffeted, you can get really spun out by it."

"It’s hard not to be occasionally overwhelmed by the enormity of the challenge we’re facing in this pandemic but nothing has slowed for the strong of spirit during this time. It has been a relentless, pride-swallowing siege of a time, yet productive."

"I have the best fans in the world and I aim to utilise my platform for good — to share things I uncover about the world, climate, technology."

"I had an incredible 10-year run with Marvel which pushed me creatively. I now have tons more ambition to do things I haven’t done before. Evolving is key — the worst thing you can do is get in your own way. Just in the matter of me wanting to be a fit father, husband and citizen, it’d be irresponsible of me to not keep my eye ahead so I can prepare my mind for what’s to come and the transition. As an actor, every time I get a script now, I think about the commitment and time I’d be away from my missus and kiddos."

"I was fortunate in that I was pre-Internet with much of my misbehavior, but I think I always had a bit of a moral psychology and I always wanted to kinda do the right thing, which doesn’t count for much, and then I kinda took it on the chin."

"It’s a very American thing to build up and break down and come back. It is in its own weird way the heroes journey."

"I like the idea of a kind of–a guy who used to be on the world. I just love the hermit will, like, I’ve known folks who have verged on agoraphobia and I think it’s weird–it’s just the funniest thing but I think of everyone can relate to it. Could you imagine at some point you just like I’m never leaving the house again except his is also I’m never interacting with another human again. And then, things to these kids that come along, he has to change it."

"I always had an interest in the story of everything. A little bit of an existential crisis always helps when you’re looking for a sea change. If I know anything, it’s that I never learned anything while I was talking."

"You don’t get an education if you press a space bar, you know? You get an education if you open up the back of the TV. So yes. I don’t care about social media, but seeing how it is a tool, I am finally paying attention to the strategy and the culture of what has been going on. I’m just playing catch up."

"Tell your friend, Veronica It's time you celebrate Chanukah I hope I get a harmonica On this lovely, lovely Chanukah So drink your gin and tonic-ah And smoke your marijuani-khah If you really, really wanna-kah Have a happy, happy, happy, happy Chanukah Happy Chanukah"

"Paul Newman's half Jewish and Florence Henderson's half, too Put them together, What a fine looking Jew!"

"I wanted to see the fucking score! What do you got to do that's so fucking important? You can't join the religious cult with me!"

"Hey, that last skit was written for a reason. If any of your buddies had fooled around with a sixty year old man, don't throw them out of your car, or you will die. Now, enjoy the rest of the album!"

"I've met Adam Sandler a couple of times and he's a nice guy, smart and personable. Considering what I've written about his movies, he could also be described as forgiving and tactful. What I cannot understand is why he has devoted his career to finding new kinds of obnoxious voices and the characters to go along with them."

"The film is exhilarating to watch because Sandler, liberated from the constraints of formula, reveals unexpected depths as an actor. Watching this film, you can imagine him in Dennis Hopper roles. He has darkness, obsession and power."

"We've only just begun to live, White lace and promises A kiss for luck and we're on our way."

"Before the rising sun we fly, So many roads to choose We start out walking and learn to run."

"Sharing horizons that are new to us, Watching the signs along the way, Talking it over just the two of us, Working together day to day Together."

"So much of life ahead We'll find a place where there's room to grow, And yes, we've just begun."

"Why are there so many songs about rainbows And what's on the other side? Rainbows are visions, but only illusions, And rainbows have nothing to hide. So we've been told and some choose to believe it I know they're wrong, wait and see. Someday we'll find it, the rainbow connection, The lovers, the dreamers and me."

"Our love is an old love, baby. It's older than all our years. I have seen in strange young eyes Familiar tears."

"We're old souls in a new life baby. They gave us a new life To live and learn."

"Our paths have crossed and parted, This love affair was started Long, long ago. This love survives the ages In its story lives are pages Fill them up, may ours turn slow."

"Our love is a strong love, baby. We give it all And still receive."

"All souls last forever So we need never fear goodbye."

"In time, we kiss — hello!"

"The best part of being a songwriter — beyond being able to make a living at it — is what I call the "heart payment" of a song. That's when somebody comes up after a concert and says, "My mom was a single mom, and 'You And Me Against The World' was a really important song to us." Or "We got married to 'We've Only Just Begun'" or 'Evergreen.' Or "'I Won't Last A Day Without You' got me through some hard times.'" That's heart payment for a songwriter."

"I think the trick for any songwriter is authenticity. For the young songwriter coming up who is connected to his generation, as I was connected to mine, write honestly about what's going on in the center of your life. You know, when "We've Only Just Begun" was a Number 1 record, I think the Number 1 album in the country was "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida." So it was as far away from what was happening in the music scene as you can get. And yet it was a hit. I think it was a hit because of, obviously, Karen's amazing vocal, but I think that any time we write authentically and honestly about what's going on in the center of our chest, because people are so much alike, there's a big a chance that it's going on in the center of your chest, too."

"Relating to the specifics of relationships, and writing love songs, I tapped into something that seemed to work for my generation. I love the fact that some of the songs continue to survive, but I think that there's a window of opportunity for a time when you really, really relate to your generation. And I think a lot of us pass through that as songwriters."

"If I was a better poet like William Carlos Williams I’d be able to write about anything, but I’m just a minor poet. So I just write about things like moments of crisis that tend to be on the sadder, darker side. You can spend ten minutes in a really dark place and write a song about it that lasts forever."

"There are no angels there are devils in many ways"

"Crowded fifty to a room, There's too many rats in this cage of the world, And the women know their place, They sit home and write letters, And when they visit once a year, Well they both just sit there and stare, Gotta keep bars in between us, See how we are"

"The life I lead is mighty slim pickens, there ain't much call for stompin' on chickens"

"Climbing uphill, one dollar bill, this town is far."

"I'm sick. It's passed down through my family. I am an addict. I'm sick."

"I'm a lot happier, man. I've been through so much shit. I've just let go. Ever heard of that term "Let Go"? Ever understood it?"

"I have nothing to hide."

"Why I’m telling you this is because that’s where this music comes from, that’s where my art comes from. You’re talking to a miracle; I am a miracle. I’m not halfway there, you know, dut-dut-dut-dut-da, drink a beer, hang out with my buddies, smoke a joint and get together with the band, wanna be a rock star; no. I am a very troubled individual who has been handed these obstacles in life, and overcome my fears to be honest with myself, so I can be honest with you. That’s not exploitation, it’s liberation."

"The key is so distant, I've opened doors. Know when to listen, know what to listen for."

"I've finally found the reason, I don't need an excuse. I've got this time on my hands, you are the one to abuse."

"Well, I'm not the same and I'm born again; it's the same ol' saying."

"Dancing with the wind: the fire burns, the water drowns."

"There is genius and then there is madness and a fine line, it is said, divides them. One day you're recording a four-track demo tape of your own music in your sister's basement. Practically the next day, you're opening gigs for Metallica and your debut album is on fire, heading for platinum sales; that's madness. Genius, many people claim, is what got you there...at 17 years of age. -- David Lilly"

"Knowing what I know now, to see everything that he’s gone through, it’s a tough deal. Even if you’re successful, it’s just a different world. It’s not real. You’ve got to separate the business from what’s real. Failure is an event, not a person. -- Gary Meeks"

"It would be an attempt to define the role, responsibility, and path of the performing musician. Our simple job is to bring beauty and inspiration to others and to do this through the most honest and humble search to find these qualities within our unique selves and then within our unique work; to painstakingly increase our knowledge and to refine and re-refine our results until we are certain that until some new enlightenment falls to us, we have done the best that we possibly can; and that as in any human endeavour which attempts to transcend its mortal bounds, we always know that we still do not know."

"Walkin' my poodles, man, it never gets old With my dogs on the leash, I got bitches on the hold A first-AIDS kit? That's a rhesus monkey I bust more nuts than a pistachio junkie"

"High school party, senior year Boys and girls are all sippin' on beer I like soda / Where's the soda? Am I the only fuckin' person here that likes soda?"

"My whole family thinks I'm gay I guess it's always been that way Maybe it's 'cause of the way that I walk Makes them think I like... boys"

"'Cause I'm Bo, yo / I'm the greatest rapper ever And I'll weather your weather whether you think I'm clever or not Think you're better, you're not / Don't need a sweater, I'm hot I'm a real G, shorty, that can really find your G-spot"

"'Cause girls are like donuts when I be bustin' Bo nuts I can make 'em cream-filled or give them a layer of glaze I'm like Doug's friend Skeeter whenever I meet her Because I skeet her so hard people call her Patty Mayonnaise"

"Love is... takin' a dive and gettin' really comfortable and peein' in the pool, and Love is... a real-life porn— minus all the stuff that makes porn cool, and Love is... a homeless guy searchin' for treasure in the middle of the rain, and Findin' a bag of gold coins and slowly finding out they're all filled with chocolate, and Even though he's heartbroken, he can't complain, 'cause he was hungry in the first place"

"Love is... your favorite food for every breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and Love is... the Holocaust, except you don't die quick and you don't get thinner, and Love is... bein' the owner of the company that makes rape whistles, and Even though you started the company with good intentions, trying to reduce the rate of rape, Now you don't want to reduce it at all, 'cause if the rape rate declines, you'll see an equal decline in whistle sales"

"What's a pirate minus the ship? / Just a creative homeless guy And an anteater plus a large hungry mutant ant? / An ironic way to die And what's domain domain range? / A kid with too much in his pants And two balls minus one? / Seven titles at the Tour de France"

"We the people of the USA / José, we're not talkin' to you, ese We got a border in order to keep you out / It's what my NYU essay's about Cause we're xenophobic warrior princess / Molested by my Uncle Sam, is that incest? "I Want You... to smell my finger! Does my nephew's scent still linger?""

"Look at all of Bo's hos, lookin' for a ride on Bo's hose And I spot a little Latino, booty so big, call it "Oprah's ego" We go to it, through it / She says "¡Dios mia, mi amigo!" Pull it out, stick it in your mouth, and I bust in the back of ya "Swallow bitch! There's people starvin' in Africa!""

"If I had a dime for every time a homeless guy asked me for change, I'd still say no."

"If every day you play the board game Risk You've probably never taken a risk In your life / And Monopoly has far From a stranglehold on the board game market A little kid died from suffocation When he choked on a game piece from Operation"

"We [artists] ask questions! [...] Questions like "Where are all the Sour Patch Parents?" Questions like "If Mickey's a mouse, and Minnie's a mouse, and Donald's a duck, and Daisy and Goofy-- if they're all animals and they can talk, why is Pluto just a fuckin' dog? Did they just forget to anthropomorphize him, or worse, is Mickey keeping a mentally-handicapped dude as a pet?"

"We know, Lord, from John 3:16, that you so loved the world that you sent your only son to die for us. Your only son! But at the same time, we're all your children, so in your eyes, we're a bunch of girls. So help us as we struggle with the temptations of lesbianism. Amen."

"The average person has one Fallopian tube. [pause for laughter] The average penis length is 5.5 inches, and finally, the average penis length of a man who googles "average penis length" is 3.5 inches."

"I must be psychotic / I must be demented To think that I'm worthy of all this attention Of all of this money you worked really hard for I slept in late while you worked at the drug store My drug's attention / I am an addict But I get paid to indulge in my habit It's all an illusion / I'm wearing makeup I'm wearing makeup, makeup, makeup"

"What do you call a kid with no arms and an eyepatch? ... Names!"

"This next song is about how sad I am. It's about all the sad stuff; just picture a depressed onion cutting itself."

"You shouldn't abstain from rape just 'cause you think that I want you to/ You shouldn't rape cause rape is a fucked up thing to do"

"Sluts! Sluts! I fuck sluts! Sluts get fucked when I fuck sluts! No ifs, ands, and/or butts, I fuck sluts! I fuck sluts! Nice girls are nice, but no good for nut-sucking! They'll need a serene night to green light a butt-fucking, but that'll be easy with sleazy old slut fucking! Boo to the nice girls, praise he to slut fucking! I have a list. A list? Yes a list of all the sluts I've missed. I have not fucked or sucked these sluts and thus my nuts are fucking pissed! So when I fuck the lucky slut my nut removes her from the list; another dumb cum bucket struck from my nut-sucking, suck-it-slut, slut fucking bucket list. (aside to the audience, "Yes! You hear the influences. Chaucer, Keats!) Sluts can be white, black, brown, pink, or almond! They can be skinny with big tits or skinny with small ones! Sluts can be perky or preppy or posh with their brains and their clothes all shrunk from the wash! But some sluts are pretty and funny and smart...these sluts can lift all your thoughts from your dick to your heart. They can talk about science or music or art. They can put you together, or they can pull you apart. But don't trust these sluts. Don't...don't you dare. They'll force you to trust them and love them and care! And then they'll be gone and you'll be aware of the hole in your heart that that dumb slut left there."

"So I've been freaking out for a long time, thinking that I'm never gonna finish this special and I'm gonna be working on it forever. And recently, I've been feeling like, oh man, maybe I am getting close to done with this. Maybe I'm gonna finish it after all. And that has made me completely freak out because if I finish this special, that means I have to not work on it anymore, and that means I have to just live my life, and so I'm not gonna do that, and I'm gonna not finish this special. I'm gonna work on it forever, I think, and I'm never gonna release it. So I'm not talking to anybody right now, I'm just talking to myself. So yeah, who fucking cares? Fuck you, and goodbye, and let's keep going."

"You wanna hear a funny story? So uh... five years ago- I quit performing live comedy. Because I was beginning to have uh severe panic attacks while on stage. Which is not a great place to have them. So I-I quit... and I didn't perform for five years. And I spent that time trying to improve myself mentally. And you know what- I did, I got better. I got so much better in fact, that in January of... 2020, I thought "you know what I should... start performing again. I've been hiding from the world and I need to reenter." And then... the funniest thing happened..."

"So, um... I've been working on this special now for six months. And the whole time I've had a... a goal in mind, which is I wanted to finish this thing before I turned 30. Um, because the idea of turning 30, while still in this fucking room, working on this thing alone, um, that just seemed... I just... I just wanted to avoid that. And you might be thinking, "Well, that's fine. You know, look at you, You radiate such youth, You must not be turning 30 for years." And that's very, uh, nice of you to say. But the truth is um, I turn 30 in less than a minute. So I'm just gonna sit here and enjoy my twenties, and then get back to work. Yay."

"The simple narrative taught in every history class Is demonstrably false and pedagogically classist Don't you know the world is built with blood? And genocide and exploitation The global network of capital essentially functions To separate the worker from the means of production And the FBI killed Martin Luther King Private property's inherently theft And neoliberal fascists are destroying the left And every politician, every cop on the street Protects the interests of the pedophilic corporate elite"

"Could I interest you in everything? All of the time? A little bit of everything All of the time Apathy's a tragedy And boredom is a crime Anything and everything All of the time"

"Hey, what can you say? We were overdue But it'll be over soon"

"I always wanted to be a comedian and actor, [...] I basically stumbled into the music medium, though. I'm OK, but that's about it. I like to think I'm good enough not to negatively affect the performance."

"I don't think there's necessarily a story, but there's definitely a theme here. One of my favorite kind of dark jokes is, "How do you make God laugh? You make a plan." Nobody ever makes a plan that they're gonna go out and get hit by a car. A plan almost always has a happy ending. Essentially, every plan is a tiny prayer to Father Time. I really like the idea of a plan not being seen as having definite outcomes, but more like little wishes."

"I feel like there's a lot of beauty in the darkness of Narrow Stairs, but that's not really a place I'm ready to go to for a while. I'm interested in taking a different approach and having the next record be different in tone — I'm just not interested in making another dark, dark album."

"It wasn't quite what is seemed: a lack of pleasantries (My able body isn't what it used to be) I must admit I was charmed by your advances Your advantage left me helplessly into you"

"I wish the world was flat like the old days Then i could travel just by folding a map No more airplanes, or speed trains, or freeways There'd be no distance that could hold us back"

"I am waiting for something to go wrong I am waiting for familiar resolve"

"And it's strange They are basically the same So i don't ask names anymore"

"Our Youth is fleeting Old age is just around the bend And I can't wait to go grey And I'll sit and wonder Of every love that could have been If I'd only thought of something charming to say"

"You touch her skin And then you think That she is beautiful But she don't mean a thing to me"

"And tiny vessels oozed into your neck And formed the bruises That you said you didn't want to fade But they did and so did I that day"

"If there's no one beside you When your soul embarks Then I'll follow you into the dark"

"I once knew a girl In the years of my youth With eyes like the summer All beauty and truth In the morning I fled Left a note and it read Someday you will be loved."

"You'll be loved you'll be loved Like you never have known The memories of me Will seem more like bad dreams Just a series of blurs Like I never occurred Someday you will be loved"

"How I wish you could see the potential The potential of you and me It's like a book elegantly bound, but In a language that you can't read just yet You got to spend some time, love You got to spend some time with me And I know that you'll find love I will possess your heart"

"As the flashbulbs burst she holds a smile Like someone would hold a crying child Soon everybody will ask what became of you Your heart was dying fast and you didn't know what to do."

"It seems that you live in someone else's dream In a hand-me-down wedding dress With the things that could have been are repressed But you said your vows and you closed the door On so many men who would have loved you more"

"I pulled On The Road off the shelf and found myself reading it between classes, and at that time in my life it was exactly what I craved, exactly what I needed to hear. I thought, “That’s the way, that’s the ideal life, that’s great. You get in a car and you drive and you see your friends and you end up in a city for a night and you go out drinking and you catch up and you share these really intense experiences. And then you’re on the road and you’re doing it again.” The romance of the road, particularly from Kerouac’s work, encapsulated how I wanted to live. I found a way to do it by being a musician, which is what I always wanted to be. The traveling and the being on tour and being away from home set a precedent for me where I thought, “Oh yeah, this is how it works.” But then in reading Big Sur, it’s the end of the road. You end up with a series of failed relationships and you end up being an alcoholic and in your late 30s, and not having any kind of real grip on the lives of the people around you. That’s the potential other end of the spectrum when you’re never tied to anybody or anything. I run the risk of losing touch with the people in my life that mean the most to me because I have made the decision to live like this."

"If you tell certain people that you like Kerouac, they assume that’s all you read, like you don’t know anything else about literature. I recognize all the things that people dislike about the way he writes — his tone and the sentimentality of it all. But those books were there for me at a very important point in my life."

"Because of my age and what I do for a living and the amount of time that I’ve spent away from my family and loved ones, I’m starting to relate more to the late-period Kerouac stuff in the way that I once related to the fun and excitement of the early material. There’s a darkness inside of me that I’m only now starting to come to grips with and accept. And it’s starting to scare me."

"At some point I thought that, as I got older, I’d come to terms with a lot of things. I’d solve some big problems, and eventually I’d become content. It’s almost more depressing to think that the older you get, the more your problems multiply. When I’m old, I’d like to wake up in the morning and not really do anything — just be happy to exist. I’d like to look at my accomplishments and sit back and revel in my own achievement. But I don’t think that’ll ever happen. Before I made a living playing music, I used to work shitty job after shitty job and think “Man, as soon as I’m able to make a living in music, it’s really going to come together then, it’s really going be amazing.” I remember hoping there’d be 10 people at a show in 1998 when there was an incredible write-up in the local weekly. I don’t want to go back to that period of being obscure and having nobody know who I am, let alone have to struggle to get people to come to the show. I remember what it was like, and it was shitty."

"Liking interesting things doesn’t make you interesting."

"I decided a handful of years ago that I just want to write songs that you can understand as soon as you put the record on. There’s no need to veil what’s happening in the song the way I used to. My goal as a songwriter now is to simply write some memorable turns of phrase."

"It’s amazing to have people singing a song back to you on a stage. It’s great to finish recording a song and play it for your friend, and they love it. That feels good. But nothing feels better than when you’ve finished something and you know it’s good, and you know that those other responses will come in time."

"Some fans get genuinely upset if I admit that a song that they held close to their heart was not based on actual events in my life. Like “What Sarah Said”: I was never in a waiting room in a hospital waiting for news that somebody was going to die."

"A lot of the material is about the inevitable disappointment people feel as they move through life, and things don’t feel the way they expect. No experience will ever match up to the idealized version in your mind."

"Our band is very polarizing. There are people who absolutely can’t stand us, and people who absolutely can’t live without us. I’d rather spark those kind of polar-opposite feelings than have people be indifferent."

"I don’t spend my time perusing message boards to find out what people think about me or if people think my songs are good or if people love that lyric or this or that. I just want to be happy with it myself — and if other people like it, that’s great."

"At this point in my life, I find myself obsessed with alternate paths I could’ve taken. I don’t think about this with a sense of regret, but with a sense of wonder..."

"I find it very hard to accept the wonderful things in my life. My life really is great: I do exactly what I want to do for a living, I have a wonderful person to share my life with, I have a great family, I have great friends. But somehow there’s a void. I’m the last person who should be complaining or wondering why I’m perpetually unhappy. I would like to think that my lack of contentment is part of what makes my work the way it is, and for the better. I would rather make great records than make great relationships. When I’m at odds with myself, I would rather fuck up every relationship I’ve ever been in and write great records. And not because I need a breakup to provide me with material. Not like that."

"It’s hard enough having a relationship with one person, but to have a relationship with three other bandmates that you are so intimately tied to and you spend so much time with — and to have that actually work and function — is just astounding. I have been in a band for more than 10 years now. I never thought I’d be doing anything for 10 years straight, let alone a band, and I feel so fortunate for that. I have been allowed for some reason to do that. But it’s even more amazing that we get along better now than we did 10 years ago."

"An ex-girlfriend once got upset when I told her that music is the most important thing in my life. It’s more important than anyone else could ever be. I don’t want to be overly dramatic and say it’s the only thing that gets me up and keeps me going. But people in your life come and go. As you go through your life, you make friendships, you break friendships, you have relationships. Music is the one thing I’ve always been able to rely on. So why wouldn’t it be the most important thing in my life?"

"Dude. You are marrying Zooey Deschanel. You have nothing, I repeat, nothing to be sad about anymore. From here on out, please only songs about emotional guys and their blind luck."

"Actually, it's tough, because he's not really screwing up. He seems to be doing a good job, but we're there just in case — the first time he does anything."

"Honestly, it's the greatest show on television. It's live. It's topical. It makes you laugh. It's just a great vibe."

"When I got asked to sing "Silent Night" on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon just before Christmas, I saw it as an honor and an opportunity. I loved that show, so being a guest on it was awesome. It was also the first time since way back in the beginning that I just sung without all the choreography. I'm always dancing or running around. But this time, it wasn't about the spectacle. It was all about my voice. And that sing is no joke, either. It felt like I was being recognized as a real singer. And that's really important to me. Music is my life, and in order to build a meaningful career, making the best-quality music I can is my priority."

"This week, NBC told us five years in advance that Conan O'Brien will take over for Jay Leno, but the network still hasn't said who'll take over for Jimmy Fallon this weekend."

"I had the naive, simplistic idea that producers and writers and artists of the time helped in a minuscule way to change the mind-set of America."

"The songwriting style, to me, is superior... there was a certain amount of joy in it, no matter how sad the song is. You get joy in listening to these Buddy Holly or Roy Orbison sad lyrics. I'm attracted to songs that have balance between the darks and the lights and giving them all equal opportunity."

"I treat the act of making a record very much like working in a laboratory, experimenting with sounds and ideas... Whoever chooses to latch onto it, great; whoever doesn't, that's fine, too. The reaction always pales in comparison to the weight of the act of production."

"When you're absolute beginners, It's a panoramic view, From Her Majesty, Mt. Zion, And the Kingdom is for you."

"That's always the hardest question. Lately I've been listening to Derek and the Dominos, the Bar-Kays. I really like the first Patti Smith. I'm just starting to discover the Cure. I keep trying to find things to open myself up to. I enjoy Soundgarden. The singer [Chris Cornell] just buries me. The guy sings so great. On the club circuit, I like Saigon Saloon a lot."

"When asked what kind of music and bands he enjoys"

"My growth was stopped at two years old. And when they talk about Axl Rose being a screaming two-year-old, they're right. There's a screaming two-year-old who's real pissed off and hides and won't show himself that often, even to me. Because I couldn't protect him. And the world didn't protect him."

"We wish we were doing it, of course, under much better circumstances, but this man was loved. For Chris."

"Feed the soul, starve the ego."

"(on the plane crash) I saw Travis running and flailing, trying to put out fire on his body. He screamed, ‘What do I do?’ and I said, ‘Roll!’ He did, but the fire didn’t go out. He tried to rip his clothes off. I finally put the flames out by smothering him with my body. Some of my burns are from that. His sock was on fire – I burned my fingers taking it off."

"They shaved my head and took layers of skin from my scalp. To heal the wounds, I was in a hyperbaric chamber for 90 minutes twice daily for four days. It’s claustrophobic. One of my first nights home, I watched ‘Iron Man’ with friends. In the scene where Robert Downey Jr. comes out of the cave with a blowtorch, my whole body cringed. That night, I had a nightmare someone spilled fuel on me and was trying to light me on fire. I woke up and thought, ‘Oh my God, this is going to happen forever?’"

"I hadn't heard his remixes and didn't know how amazing a drummer Travis is. But we got together, I threw on James Brown's 'Funky Drummer,' one of the most sampled beats in hip-hop, and 'I Know You Got Soul' by Bobby Byrd. His face would just open up; he would match the beat perfectly. I thought, 'Damn, this is fun.' It's like a skeleton you get to put the clothes on. And once the clothes are on, you yank out the spine."

"I have really bad days and I have really OK days. It's strange. I'm blessed. I'm alive. I'm here."

"There’s no reason why I should have lived or why I lived and they didn’t. And it’s something I struggle with every day."

"I've prayed every night for the past 10 years. There's a lot more to thank God for now. My philosophy is 'live life to the fullest,' [and] I was saved for a reason. Maybe I'm going to help someone else. I don't question it. All I know is, I'm thankful I'm still here."

"The fact that I can be in an airport and someone says, "there's DJ AM" means something, right? I just don't consider myself a celebrity, I've never viewed myself that way. Five Minutes with DJ AM (August 2008)."

"What I do with the majority of my free time is help people get off drugs. It’s nice to just sit and listen to them talk about what’s going on in their life and not think about what’s going on with me for a while. Success is not money, it’s happiness. Interview with DJ AM"

"New York, New York. Big city of dreams, but everything in New York ain't always what it seems. Last Twitter posting by DJ AM (August 25, 2009)."

"Iam kida the greatest Dj of all time."

"I saw DJ AM play in a mansion in Miami, and he amazed me with his skills and the music he picked to make the crowd move. He made sure everyone — I mean everyone — had a good time!"

"I am deeply saddened by the news of the passing of DJ AM. He was our resident DJ at Rain Nightclub at the Palms Casino Resort. We considered him a friend and a great artist. He will truly be missed."

"In complete shock. I really want to use words right now but I can’t get em. Fuck. We’re supposed to lose our friends to time, at an age when we’re ready to agree to the terms of having lived a long life. Not now."

"I just can’t wrap my head around it – I don’t want to believe it’s real – and nothing I can say will serve his memory any justice right now. I’m just f-ng sad sad."

"We were live on-air and I had to fill for time, so I just rolled up on him — I didn't know him. And I remember thinking how unfazed he was that we'd just shoved a camera in his face, because he was kind, he was charismatic, he was funny. He was a good guy and I remember that meeting very well. We spoke after that, and we would see each other out a lot and I would go and see him play. He was always cool, like effortlessly cool."

"This week has been one of the hardest I've ever lived. My close friend, Adam had passed away. Known for his impeccable DJing. He was much more than that to me and many, many other people. He helped and touched everyone who met him. Treating you as if he had known you forever. He was always sharing such joy among others… and if you were lucky enough to hear the sound of his laughter, you got to hear something very, very, special. It's incredibly hard to think of what to say about you Adam, as tears are running down my face. All I can say is I love you Adam and I miss you and am so glad you were someone in my sister’s, and my life."

"I have never experienced anything quite like Adam Goldstein. He made me feel warm and whole. He smelled soft. Adam was a remarkable human being, and so many have been blessed by his presence. We talked of marriage and excitement of having children together. He would whisper in my ear sometimes before we went to sleep, 'Goodnight, my sweet angel.' Most mornings when I woke up, he'd make me toast and juice and say, 'Good morning, soul mate.' I will cherish the memories forever. Even though our time together was short, I would change nothing. The love I continue to feel for him and the love that we shared together will live with me and those who witnessed us together forever. I will never be the same without him. A part of me has passed away with him. Even the warmest of days will never compare to the warmth I felt when I touched him. He was my soul mate, and now he is my soul. He was my amazing grace."

"I love them hoes, love them hoes, love them hoes I love them hoes, love them hoes, love them hoes I love them hoes, love them hoes, love them hoes I love them—ooh!—hoes"

"You look sad even though we just met No need to get upset But I got a show, gotta go, so I thank you And if you wanna still get sexed down You could catch the next Greyhound But until then, I gotta go, so I thank you"

"When I met you, everything seemed right But the truth is you fucked on the first night It sank in slow; now I know you're a ho Yo, I shoulda listened when my friends told me so"

"I caught you in the club last week You looked like a freak in the VIP Sittin' on laps and suckin' on necks Actin' like a slut 'cause you're trippin' on X"

"I got just what you're looking for Yo, I freak it like you like it, then you want some more Let's explore the bedroom floor Over and over and over"

"Fuck what I said It don't mean shit now Fuck the presents Might as well throw 'em out Fuck all those kisses They didn't mean jack Fuck you, you ho I don't want you back"

"You played me You even gave him head!"

"Now it's O-over But I do admit I'm sad It hurts real bad I can't sweat that, 'cause I loved a ho"

"Friends front in front of me Fuckin' wannabes In your ear But they don't know Eamon"

"When you come, please, girl, act right Don't try none of your crazy shit tonight So when you come, please, girl, act right I don't give a fuck; you been actin' up"

"You should know by now When I take you out, you act proper When we at places You know your place when hoes holler Fuck that shit You know the rules Every girl that I fuck gets put through school"

"Hey trick Better start actin' right (Whoa oh) Oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh Swallow You know that it's tastin' right (Whoa oh) Oh oh oh oh, oh oh oh oh oh"

"Do whatcha gotta do I fucked your friend this afternoon"

"First I saw your gorgeous eyes Then noticed your ass was fly I just thought we could have fun I could show you affection"

"I can show you who's the man Let me show you with my hands I just want you close to me I'll get you wet Just wait and see"

"I may not be your man, baby But you know I'm drivin' you crazy That's why you'll fuck with me for the rest of your life (Rest of your life) I know you're lovin' the sex Swallow it up; it's better than X That's why you're stuck with me for the rest of your life (Rest of your life)"

"What I gotta do? Cats don't even have a clue Can't stand to see Me kick a flow so unbelievably And never gave a hand Askin' 'bout the backup plan Now that it's true Forever tellin' me that you always knew"

"Check the mailbox and I got my check Sit back, relax as I sip my Beck's Think about all the shit I can get So I spend and spend 'til I think I'm set"

"Smokin' Drinkin' Livin' Laughin' Fuckin' Buggin' Lovin' Singin' Spendin' Chillin' Bonin' Moanin'"

"I'm 'bout to bless the world again Got chickens drippin', wishin' with my pen Gonna sell millions on top of millions I'm just gonna blow"

"And I been waitin' all my life And I been havin' big dreams times twice"

"When I call (Yeah) Girl, don't be wastin' my time (Uh) You know what's good (Uh-huh) Drink, fuck, and come and get high Hope you learn So you don't have to ever ask why Now you know I love fuckin' all the time"

"Body (Body) I wanna touch your body (Body) I wanna feel your body (Body) Body Whoa!"

"I never trusted you one minute Tellin' people that I'm finished Number one in twenty countries But to you I'm still nobody When I'm around you, life gets harder But when you're sleepin', E gets smarter (Uh, yeah)"

"Every time I hear somebody doubt me, I just laugh about it Keeps me hungry, focused on the cash Trust me, don't fuck with me or catch you disrespecting me There's friends of mine do whatever I ask See, your ass is just a joke Front but love me on the low Stop the swinging from my dick Bitch, get off my shit"

"It was four in the morning I'm yawning and feening and scheming on a chick to lay When somebody said the afterparty was jumpin' off around my way I said, "I'm wit' it My dick gon' get it It's all love, life's so smooth""

"So I seen chickens, started spittin' Got me thinkin', "Should I let her ride the dick tonight?" Fuck that, put her in the back Let her yap 'cause she know I'm 'bout to lay the pipe Start buggin' when I'm clubbin' Do I really need the hooker hangin' by my side? Pulled over; shit, I fucked her quick Then kicked her out my ride"

"Yeah Yeah, that's right (Ho) Ho, ho (Oh) Uh Staten Island, uh (Whoa) Yeah (Uh) Come on (Yeah) Uh Yo Yeah, bitch, bob ya head (Yeah) Ho-wop, come on (Yeah, uh)"

"Don't know what ya talkin' 'bout, I'll always have hoes by my side (Uh) Smokin' blunts, gettin' drunk, stayin' high 'til the very last day I die (Uh) And there's nothing like new pussy, so there's no worries 'bout wives (Yeah) And there ain't nobody out there gonna tell me how to live my life"

"I live the fast life, keep my shit tight Never steer left 'cause I'm always right Damn, I'm so fine, and I'ma stay shinin' Let the party keep goin', flowin' Livin' life like whoa No stress, so I never feel old "Slow down" is what I been told Fuck that, I keep it outta control Like whoa (Come on)"

"See, I would fly a million miles on the worst airline (Coach!) All around the world Just to see your frown Turn into a smile"

"I met a girl the other day, and She said, "Wow, Eamon You're different from the other men I see" Well, uh I said, "I'm different 'cause I got soul, baby""

"I ain't got a fancy car I own 'Cause I done put millions up my nose I ain't got a uptown lavish flat I've signed some bad contracts"

"Famous friends don't call me no more And I ain't on sold-out arena tours I don't got trap beats with mumble rap But, baby, I'm back"

"Mama don't cry I couldn't stop I know I put You through a lot"

"You're my flesh and blood, I'm part Of you Yeah When I'm harming me I'm harming you I'm your baby boy, and you're My best friend I won't let you down again"

"I'll make It right At any cost I fought The war And almost lost I'll be back In your arms soon"

"I pray and plead you go and get up and leave, girl Go save yourself while there's time Your mommy, daddy ain't approving of me, girl So go and find that good fit, goodbye"

"Damn, I ain't lyin' These hoes love providin' When my dick hits your pussy, there's no denyin' Kissin' my body Make me come like shotties Love them trees, but I got a new favorite hobby There ain't no stoppin' From hoes gone ho-woppin' When I come to town, you know what the fuck's poppin'"

"See, I don't (Who the fuck knows?) Know why (Huh-huh) You're sayin' that I snitched (I ain't no rat, bitch) You're the dick-suckin', off-key skank bitch (Whoo!)"

"First of all, I'd like to thank my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—without Him I would not be here today."

"A very special thanks to all the women that have cum in and out of my life."

"I WOULD LIKE TO GIVE THANKS TO GOD ALMIGHTY FOR THE STRENGTH TO CREATE."

"[T]he whole concept of ["Fuck It"] is "fuck it, I don't give a fuck, just fuck it," meaning fuck the relationship, fuck what the people will think of me, just fuck it, fuck everything, ya know?"

"I call [my music] ho-wop. It's the flavor of hip-hop, the flavor of doo-wop, and hoes."

"[My lyrical content is] adult shit, but it's not. Everybody curses now, and teenagers swear more than anyone. I've got a three-year-old nephew running around the house saying to me, "Fuck you, you ho." It's fucking insane, man."

"[I]t's so funny when I do TV shows and they're like, "Yeah, you gotta keep it clean, man." I'm like, "How the fuck do I keep it clean? My shit is called 'Fuck It.' Get the fuck out of here. Don't put me on the show if you want me to keep it clean.""

"The thing is, I'm not saying "fuck" just to say it. Every time I curse, I mean it. It might sound weird and funny, but I fucking mean the shit."

"Whoever says I'm a one-hit wonder can go suck a dick."

"My parents are the shit, man. I love them. They've stuck by me forever. They made it really nice for me. I never went through any hard times. The only hard times I went through are with hoes."

"There's so much bullshit around now in pop and hip-hop, and everybody's talking about the same fucking shit, like get the fuck outta here. That shit is horrible. I don't hate anybody, but that shit pisses me off. It's bullshit. So I wanna change things up and make people go, "Aw, man, this is the hot shit. Eamon talks from the heart. He's real.""

"I get pissed off when people at radio and TV shows say, "Can you keep a clean show?" Motherfuckers! Don't they know who they booked? It was the same with the single ["Fuck It"]. They wanted me to change the words to "Forget it" or some bullshit."

"It amazes me that there's been a fuss over me cursing when there's rappers talking about killing people."

"[In New York there are a lot of Irish-Italians because there] are a lot of Irish and a lot of Italians and they fuck each other."

"Ah, what a life is theirs who live in Christ; How vast the mystery! Reaching in height to heaven, and in its depth The unfathomed sea!"

"O happy life! life hid with Christ in God! So making me, At home, and by the wayside, and abroad, Alone with Thee!"

"Sleep, baby, sleep! Thy father's watching the sheep. Thy mother's shaking the dreamland tree, And down drops a little dream for thee. Sleep, baby, sleep!"

"You cannot prove to yourself that you love God by examining your feelings towards Him. They are indefinite and they fluctuate. But just so far as you obey Him, just so far, depend upon it, you love Him."

"You cannot will to possess the spirit of Christ; that must come as His gift, but you can choose to study His life, and to imitate it."

"We must be wise task-masters, and not require of ourselves what we can not possibly perform. Recreation we must have. Otherwise, the strings of our soul, wound up to an unnatural tension, will break."

"It sweetens every bit of work to think that I am doing it in humble, far-off, yet real imitation of Jesus."

"The question is not whether you ever gave yourself to God, but whether you are His now."

""Cheerfully and gratefully I lay myself and all I am or own at the feet of Him who redeemed me with His precious blood, engaging to follow Him, bearing the cross He lays upon me." This is the least I can do, and I do it while my heart lies broken and bleeding at His feet."

"And as to carrying religion into everything, how can one help it if one's religion is a vital part of one's-self, not a cloak put on to go to church and hang up out of the way against next Sunday."

"It is a religion of principle that God wants from us, not one of mere feeling."

"Not till I was shut up to prayer and to the study of God's word by the loss of earthly joys — sickness destroying the flavor of them all — did I begin to penetrate the mystery that is learned under the cross. And wondrous as it is, how simple is this mystery! To love Christ, and to know that I love Him — this is all."

"Much of my experience of life has cost me a great price and I wish to use it for strengthening and comforting other souls."

"I thought that prattling boys and girls Would fill this empty room; That my rich heart would gather flowers From childhood's opening bloom.One child and two green graves are mine, This is God's gift to me; A bleeding, fainting, broken heart— This is my gift to Thee."

"Some of His children must go into the furnace to testify that the Son of God is there with them."

"I am not sure that it is best for us, once safe and secure on the Rock of Ages, to ask ourselves too closely what this and that experience may signify. Is it not better to be thinking of the Rock, not of the feet that stand upon it?"

"Lay hold on Christ with both your poor, empty hands."

"The longer I live the more conscious I am of human frailty, and of the constant, overwhelming need we all have of God's grace."

"No truth can be said to be seen as it is until it is seen in its relation to all other truths. In this relation only is it true."

"Walk right in, sit right down, baby let your hair hang down. Everybody's talking 'bout a new way of walking; Do you want to lose you mind?"

"I gave you my arms, my lips, my heart, My love, my life, my all, But the best that I had to offer you I found was all too small."

"I must be the oldest living child soprano."

"Louis B Mayer created a situation that was just like a very big family, but with love and loyalty for everyone."

"Sweet and lovely, sweeter than the roses in May, And she loves me, there is nothing more I can say."

"I may seem proud; I may act gay, It's just a pose; I'm not that way, .'Cause deep down in my heart I say, I surrender, dear."

"So rare, You're like the sparkle of old champagne; Orchids in cellophane Couldn't compare to you."

"I fell in love with you first time I looked into Them there eyes. You've got a certain li'l cute way of flirtin' with Them there eyes."

"You come into this world a zero, and you leave a zero."

"People ask me, 'Why Des Moines?' I say, 'Why not, you ignorant motherfucker!'"

"Sometimes we think that we're gonna be the first people to cross the genres of human and superhuman. We've got to live up to this fucking monster we created and it's bigger than we are."

"Rock music pays off. Rock music takes me on a joyride. Rock music keeps me off the hell city bus. Rock music will always look out for me. But I will not let my torture profanity demon shoot it down."

"My demons talk to me in profanity. They think I'm a jerk. A bum. And an asshole. I just say they're a jerk, they're a bum, they're an asshole. They're no good. They better leave me alone and get off my case."

"The music I love to play is Rock 'N Roll. I love to rock like a wild animal. I love to rock it well enough to whip a yak's ass. I love to whip it good on a horse's ass. I love to rock it real hard. I love to rock it all the way to Russia. I love to kick out the Jazz and kick it out all the way."

"Here's what I'm going to have to say to all of you. If some of you have demons in your head who talk to you in profanity or whatever, don't let your demon shoot down your rock music, don't let your demon keep you off the joy bus. So like I say, Rock music pays off."

""Rock over London. Rock on Chicago." - Repeated at the end of most songs"

"Once upon a time I fucked a slut in the ass. She was all over my dick. I made her lick my dick off, then I turned around and rammed my big black dick back in her ass. / Say Ronald Reagan, what the fuck are you doing in my house? Get out of here right now, and don't you ever come back over here again! If you come back this way, I will shoulder the weapon and shoot the living shit out of you!"

"Number 1. I'm gonna do this song again. Number 2. I'm gonna do this song again all the way up your ass. Number 3. I'm gonna fuck your ass up like in a car crash. Number 4. I'm gonna fuck you up like a goddamn accident. Number 5. Jesus is the answer!"

"Before I got fat, I was slim / That was this time when I was eating McDonalds."

"From now on, I'm staying away from fatty foods, by eating healthy foods, and going on a strict diet"

""McDonald's is a place to rock / It is a restaurant where they buy food to eat / It is a good place to listen to the music / People flock here to get down to the rock music." - Rock 'N Roll McDonald's"

""McDonald's hamburgers are the worst / They are worse than Burger King's" - Rock 'N Roll McDonald's"

""I am a good person to the max / I am a good guy in Jesus' name." - Wesley Willis"

""I have a mean schizophrenia demon in my head / My demon racks me with profanity / My demon tells me lies and says I'm a jerk, a bum and an asshole / My demon keeps me from joy bus riding by torturing me" - Wesley Willis"

""The vultures were hungry." - The Vultures Ate My Dead Ass Up"

""Suck a polar bear's funky ass!" - Suck a Cheetah's Dick"

""It was Sunday, March 12th, 2000 at 6:20 PM / I was about to fly from Chicago-Midway to Orlando, Florida / Suddenly my mean schizophrenic demon called me a jerk / Suddenly I yelled 'FUCK YOU' on the airplane" - My Keyboard Got Damaged"

""Dale Dunkey shot my house up / He shot it up to get rid of the termites / He then shot at me with his BB gun" - The Termites Ate My House Up"

"Do something about your long filthy hair / It looks like a rat's nest" - Cut the Mullet"

"Take your ass to the barber shop / Tell the barber you're sick of looking like an asshole" - Cut the Mullet"

"Once upon a time, I was cursing at Daniels Chapel AME Zion Church / I called one of the deacons a motherfucker / Reverend Henry E. Miller preached about my vulgar language / He told the congregation in the sanctuary that I got a nasty filthy mouth" - They Threw Me Out of Church"

""My mother smokes that crack like a cigar / She had a good time at it / She jacks my brother for dope money / She does this by threatening him with a Smith and Wesson" - My Mother Smokes Crack Rocks"

""At 11:00 PM, the police came to my mother's house to eject her ... they locked her up for being a loser." - My Mother Smokes Crack Rocks"

""Batman beat the hell out of me and knocked me to the floor / I got back up and knocked him to the floor / He was being such a jack off" - I Whupped Batman's Ass"

""You are nothing but a crazy ass jerk!" - You Fucked That Man's Car Up"

""You think you can get away with murder / You don't know who you're fooling with / I'm going to shoot you with my BB gun" - Fuck With Me and Find Out"

""Fill me full of lead in my ass crack" - Shoot Me in the Ass"

""You are my favorite movie star / You are my big buddy / You are a low-down rotten man / You are crazy like a roll lizard" - Arnold Schwarzenegger"

""I love your movies! I love you, too!" - Arnold Schwarzenegger"

""This beast killed as many as 100,000 people / It's wings can flap like a bird / It can break a glass / It can also stab you in the ass" - The Chicken Cow"

""When the police pulled up, I was doomed / I was arrested for possession of a controlled substance / I was taken to the metal clink / I was nothing but a loser" - I Smoke Weed"

""I smoke my crack pipe everyday / I have a good time at it / I jack my mother for dope money / I do it by threatening her life with a semi-automatic" - I Smoke Weed"

"At 10:00 PM, I drove my bronco back to Birdman's real estate / I jumped over his fence after dark / I picked up a brick and shattered Birdman's window pane / Birdman sighted me doing it and reached for his pistol / Suddenly I jumped back in my bronco and took off like O.J. Simpson" - Birdman Kicked My Ass"

""The bandit wore a werewolf mask" - Attempted Armed Robbery"

""Stop shooting old ladies." - Stop the Violence"

""Destroy civilization, motherfucker!" - Stealth Bomber"

""It's the end of World War I / It's the end of World War II!" - It's the End of the Western"

""Christmas is Jesus Christ's birthday! / That's what it is all about in the mix!" - Merry Christmas"

""Suck a racehorse's bootyhole / Suck a snow leopard's ass / Suck a constipated goat's dick / Suck my doberman pincher's cock" - Suck My Dog's Dick"

""Jim Sym got on my ass for screaming like a wild animal at Genesis on Western / I freaked out a lot of customers / I also said 'suck my dick' in front of a lot of people" - Outburst"

""I used to eat McDonald's hamburgers / I used to eat three Big Macs a night / In 1992, I gained 23 more pounds / Suddenly, I weighed 360 pounds heavier" - I'm Slimming Down"

""After I stole your Sony ESP Car Discman, I went across the street to a gas station / I found me an empty jug and filled it up with gasoline / Suddenly, I ran back to your Lamborghini to set it on fire / I doused your Lamborghini with gasoline and torched it" - I Broke Out Your Windshield"

""You are so great. You are my brother / You are a cold-blooded KILLER! You are a mass murderer!" - Chuckie"

""Spider-Man messed with my girlfriend / Spider-Man wrapped his arms around her with my bedroom door closed / Suddenly, I opened the bedroom door on Spider-Man's sneaky ass / I caught him kissing my girlfriend and beat him to a pulp with a rubber hose" - I Whipped Spider-Man's Ass"

""O.J. Simpson was a no-good jerk / He is a fucking asshole / He had no business killing his ex-wife Nicole, or her friend Ronald Goldman" - O.J. Simpson"

""This man watches the football game / He enjoyed every minute of it / He was watching the Chicago Bears beat the San Francisco 49ers / You damn right!" - NFL Shit"

"Of course, Willis is above criticism -- it's hard to criticize something that is essentially variations on one simple theme, let alone a batch of songs written by a schizophrenic -- but that still doesn't make listening to any of his records any easier."

"If, as is nearly always the case, music appears to express something, this is only an illusion,and not a reality."

"To gain a better understanding, I'm just trying to make it real/reel. Like a fisherman, Pon De River fam. I Pon My Bank, deposit my thoughts. Till my mind draws a blank and I withdraw from checking. I'll leave that with ya'll for a second..."

"We all trying to get to where the suffering ends. In front of the Most High, being judged for our sins. Can't front for the Most High."

"But don't forget the blessing is in the struggle. The Most Forgiving will forgive it if you stay repentant and hustle."

"For we all are sinners. Bless us to be amongst the winners when it ends. But until then please strengthen the mission within our hearts.All praise is due to God"

"Before I start, like to make sure I'm smart. Gather my composure, rather my swagger and my couture.Pivot my fitted, then begin to rivet, with a change of lyric. In other words, I reposition how I sit it. Then make you feel it, like I mispronounced “filet.”"

"Didn't have a clue that the rapper was helping the rapers, raiders of the villages, the pillagers of the school....shooters of the innocents, tortures of the witnesses, burners of the businesses..and my bracelet was the fuel."

"The truth.. is limitless in its range, If you drop a 'T' and look at it in reverse it could hurt"

"Heavy problems genocide desensitized environments Sometimes make it hard to sympathize, pardon"

"If you open up your eyes and imagine. Expand your horizon with rhyming and rapping. Quit rapping and rhyming bout cocaine supplying. And clapping is anyone out there or are yall all absent?"

"Jay gave me a co-sign like I was RocaWear, but be clear I'm not the air/heir I'm the water, fire and the earth That means I'm doing dirt, spitting flames and quenching thirst"

"Flowers she would pick like guitar strings, for a real good whiff of how how life behind par seems."

"I used to hate hip-hop, because the women degraded. But Too Short made me laugh, like a hypocrite I played it; a hypocrite I stated, though I only recited half omitting the word b*tch, cursing I wouldn't say it. Me and dog couldn't relate, until a b*tch I dated."

"Gangsta rap-based filmings became the buildin blocks For children with leakin ceilings catchin drippins with pots Coupled with compositions from Pac, Nas's "It Was Written" In the mix with my realities and feelings Living conditions, religion, ignorant wisdom and artistic vision I began to jot, tap the world and listen,"

"Hennessy and Hypnotic swallowin, hydroponic coughin and All the world's ills, sittin' on chrome 24-inch wheels"

"Life ain't meant to come around twice, that's why I gotta get it right. They said I gotta get it honest, now I gotta give them light, but sleep on it, that's why God gave you night"

"I only fear God, know the weapons of the weak, the weakness of the heart, and never fall asleep..."

"And so it seems that I'm, sewing jeans. And, 1st and 15 is just a sewing machine. So I, cut the pattern and I, sew in seams. And, button in this hustling then publically, I'm Buddy Lee. There's no bustin' them and cuffin' them is like. Ushering in the regime, they want me to make Prince pants. But I withstand, I ain't gotten into that. A little big (B.I.G.) in the waist, two-pocket (Tupac-it) on the back. Call them Lu-vi's, O.G.'s covered in blue dye"

"Made me a ripper, deliver like a river, content a little more thicker, slicker...and they said oil and water don't mix, now they all down at the beach washing off the fish."

"I love my city really hope that God bless it, have my mind moving faster than that Hog in the Hedges"

"A match made in Heaven, set the fires in Hell"

"Rap records pressured to laugh, at a life not fast."

"My most coveted thing is a high self-esteem, and a low tolerance for them telling me how to lean, see the most important parts are the ones that are unseen, cause the wings don't make you fly and the crown don't make you king"

"So tell my enemies that they can’t injure me, I know that irritates, you have my sympathies."

"And baby girl what does it matter where your purse from. Your hair done, your nails did, your ass fat...but you're dumb."

"The future's cloudy and it's rainin on the poor class. Road to peace is closed, heavy traffic on the war paths"

"Your child's future was the first to go with budget cuts, if you think that hurts then wait here comes the upper-cut, the school was garbage in the first place that's on the up and up."

"Glenn Beck is a racist, Limbaugh is a racist, Gaza strip was getting bombed Obama didn't say shit."

"I think that all the silence is worse than all the violence,Fear is such a weak emotion that's why I despise it."

"Come across as very calm, mental state is Zen like. Always had a lot of heart, never been the tin type"

"I'm not a prophet but Fahrenheit 1/15 is being quoted by preachers. Far from being a leader but I'm still being invited by teachers."

"My teacher's like, "Mr. Jaco?" "Yes?" "With all that knowledge, You aint trying to go to college? Be a lawyer or a doctor, Get a whole lotta dollars? Rather degrade women and glorify violence?" "Well the work that works for me might not work for you No homework, I got work to do.""

"In darkness is where we truly find ourselves, in light we only find others and in others you cannot find yourself."

"Consider power as NOT getting people to obey you, but getting people to work in harmony with you with the goal being mutual benefit."

"Greed redefined and corrupted what true power is. Domination is for the weak, Harmony is the true sign of strength."

"Knowledge alone is not power, knowledge plus action equals power. Knowledge is useless without action and vice versa."

"We all KNOW better, but do we actually DO better?"

"A definition of ignorance is not KNOWING what we DO & improvement is handicapped when we don't DO what we KNOW."

"The fear that rules us comes NOT from the outside but from within. Mastering self-control also means stripping the rulers of a prized weapon."

"Fear and Sex are the two most effective weapons that are used against the people. Tempering desire motivates liberation."

"Separate wealth from value. All living things have value. We impart this value upon lifeless things to give them worth not vice versa."

"Never apologize for being real...ever. Reality is the enemy of fakes, frauds, liars and protectors of ignorance. It scares them."

"Choose respect over fame every time. Fame is just attention. Respect is an attribute of love."

"To be unknown but loved by just one is better than being known by many but loved by none."

"Try not to measure your success by the success of others. Success should be defined by one person...Yourself."

"If you feel comfortable, and you feel happy, and successful at your job, then that’s success. You define that as success, then that’s success. Success is not a general thing. It’s a personal thing. It’s a personal attribute."

"Some will love you. Some will hate you. Most won't care about you either way. This world is all Good vs. Evil. And I fight evil."

"You're from the isle of ghosts and, as you know, there are ghosts walking around all over the place over there. Loads of people have seen them, heard a voice or felt the cold temperature. I believe that they are between here and there, that they exist between the fourth and the fifth dimension and that they visit us frequently."

"I was never into the powders or pills. I tried it all but didn't like that clenched-teeth feeling. I didn't like the "I'm a palpitating rabbit and I'm gonna solve the world's problems" feeling either. I drank some beer. I'm still here."

"You know, even when the material wasn't so good, I've gotten to work with the greats, and I've always given it my best shot. I'm satisfied with my work. I could stop tomorrow, and if Bright Young Things was my last role, I could say I tidied it up with dignity."

"Greetings and death to our enemies."

"Well, the common enemy in North America is the Western consumer. The consumer has driven oil up to $50.00 a barrel so we have to have these wars. I think it's incumbent upon us to."

"I am a Spiritualist, a proud wearer of the Spiritualist badge. Mediums and psychic research have gone on for many, many years."

"You look at the floor and see the floor. I look at the floor and see molecules."

"...Danny Aykroyd went his own way when I became head of Lorimar Pictures in 1987. He said, "I can't understand the head of a management company also running a studio. There's something wrong about it." I told Danny it could only work in his favor, but he laughed. He's such a straight citizen. Maybe he was right. But with no paper to haggle over, the parting was friendly. And he's such a good guy that although I haven't represented him in years, every month he sends the Blues Brothers records' royalties I'm due, or a commission on an old acting job. Sometimes the check is for $17. Doesn't matter. I love that continuity and caring and respect."

"It's hard to make a cultural phenomenon every time."

"There are unwanted emotions and pain that goes along with any birth. Preston insists the Scientology-friendly labour doesn't forbid the mum-to-be from yelling out in pain. Screaming is fine... It's the words. If you can avoid saying certain phrases and words... Just try to keep it as quiet as possible. Of course, you are going to groan and yell. It hurts. Just keep it to a minimum."

"We lean on our church heavily, and they have helped us a lot, particularly in recent years... I have fame on the level of Marilyn Monroe, John Belushi, or Elvis Presley, but part of the reason I didn't go the way they did was because of my beliefs. People make judgments about Scientology, but often they don't know what they're talking about."

"My experience with first-time directors is that they’re all extremely prepared, because I guess they’re worried. They spend weeks preparing everything, and they have to get used to the fact that once you get there, everything goes wrong and you have to make everything up."

"I'd fuck you, but I don't have a change for a 5."

"They lockin' old white cookbook bitches up!"

"I've got pains in my head Dead on my feet My pantry's empty I ain't eaten for a weekHard times - ooh I feel so bad When I lost my baby, I lost everything I had"

"I'm going to Kansas City Kansas City, here I come I'm going to Kansas City Kansas City, here I come They got a crazy way of lovin' there And I'm gonna get me someI'm gonna be standing on the corner Twelfth Street and Vine I'm gonna be standing on the corner Twelfth Street and Vine With my Kansas City baby And a bottle of Kansas City wine"

"You ain't nothin' but a hound dog Quit snoopin' 'round my door You ain't nothin' but a hound dog Quit snoopin' 'round my door You can wag your tail But I ain't gonna feed you no more"

"One day while I was eatin' beans at Smokey Joe's Cafe Just sittin' diggin' all the scenes at Smokey Joe's Cafe A chick came walkin' through the door That I had never seen before At least I never saw her down at Smokey Joe's Cafe And I started shakin' When she sat right down next to me"

"The warden said, "come out with your hands up in the air If you don't stop this riot, you're all gonna get the chair" Scarface Jones said, "It's too late to quit Pass the dynamite, 'cause the fuse is lit""

"Treat me like a fool Treat me mean and cruel But love me Break my faithful heart Tear it all apart But love meIf you ever go Darlin', I'll be oh so lonely I'll be sad and blue Crying over you dear only"

"Well, I got a girl and Ruby is her name She don't love me but I love her just the same Ruby, Ruby, how I want ya Like a ghost I'm-a gonna haunt ya Ruby, Ruby, when will you be mine?"

"I saw her standin' on the corner A yellow ribbon in her hair I couldn't keep myself from shoutin' Look-a there...Young Blood Young Blood Young Blood I can't get you out of my mind"

"Well, now, if I have to swim a river, You know I will. And a if I have to climb a mountain, You know I will. And a if she's a hiding up On a blueberry hill, Am I gonna find her, child? You know I will. 'Cause I've been searchin'. Oh, yeah, searchin'. My goodness, searchin' every which a-way."

"The warden threw a party in the county jail The prison band was there and they began to wail The band was jumpin' and the joint began to swing You should've heard those knocked out jailbirds singLet's rock Everybody, let's rock Everybody in the whole cell block Was dancin' to the Jailhouse Rock"

"Lucky lips are always kissing Lucky lips are never blue Lucky lips will always find a pair Of lips that will be true I don't need a four-leaf clover Rabbit's foot or good luck charm With lucky lips, I'll always have A fellow in my arms"

"Well, it's Christmas time, pretty baby And the snow is falling down Well, it's Christmas time, pretty baby And the snow is falling down You be a real good little girl, 'cause Santa Claus is back in town"

"Pick up the papers from the trash. Cans and bottles you can cash. We'll better just recycle, or We're not gonna rock 'n' roll no more Yakety Yak, Take it Back.Don't be no square. Don't be no chump. Don't make this Earth a garbage dump. This planet's screaming "NO MORE FUNK!". There's no more room for no more junk. Yakety Yak, Take it Back.Yakety Yak, Take it Back. Yakety Yak, Take it Back. Yakety Yak, Take it Back. Yakety Yak, Take it Back.Kids, you don't have to go to school To teach your folks this simple rule. If it's a drink, or just a snack, Well, when it's empty, take it back. Yakety Yak, Take it Back.Who says you can't fight City Hall? Just write a letter. Make a call. Sign a petition. And, what's more, Make 'em get it at your door. Yakety Yak, Take it Back.Yakety Yak, Take it Back. Yakety Yak, Take it Back. Yakety Yak, Take it Back. Yakety Yak, Take it Back."

"Don't, don't," that's what you say Each time that I hold you this way When I feel like this and I want to kiss you Baby, don't say "don't"

"I never looked for trouble, but I never ran I don't take no orders from no kind of man I'm only made out of flesh, blood, and bone But if you're gonna start a rumble, don't you try it all alone'Cause I'm evil My middle name is Misery Yes, I'm evil So don't you mess around with me"

"Charlie Brown Charlie Brown He's a clown That Charlie Brown He's gonna get caught Just you wait and see Why is everybody always pickin' on me?"

"I plopped down in my easy chair and turned on Channel Two A bad gunslinger called Salty Sam was a-chasin' poor Sweet Sue He trapped her in the old sawmill and said with an evil laugh "If you don't gimme the deed to your ranch, I'll saw you all in half"And then he grabbed her And then? He tied her up And then? He turned on the buzz saw And then? And then? Eh-eh!And then along came Jones…"

"She comes on like a rose But everybody knows She'll get you in dutch You can look, but you better not touchPoison Ivy, Poison Ivy, Late at night while your sleepin' Poison Ivy comes a-creepin' around"

"I wanna know if she loved me. Did she really love me? Was she just playing me for a fool?I wonder why she left me. Why did she leave me so all alone? So all alone.I was gonna tell her that I loved her And that I need her Beside my side to be my guide."

"I took my troubles down to Madame Ruth You know that gypsy with the gold-capped tooth She's got a pad down at Thirty-Fourth and Vine Sellin' little bottles of Love Potion Number NineI told her that I was a flop with chicks I've been this way since 1956 She looked at my palm and she made a magic sign She said, "What you need is Love Potion Number Nine""

"When the night has come and the land is dark And the moon is the only light we'll see No, I won't be afraid, oh I won't be afraid Just as long as you stand, stand by meSo darling, darling stand by me Oh, stand by me Oh, stand - stand by me, stand by me."

"There is a rose in Spanish Harlem A red rose up in Spanish Harlem With eyes as black as coal That look down in my soul And start a fire there and then I lose control I have to beg your pardon I'm going to pick that rose And watch her as she grows In my garden"

"I can wash out forty-four pairs of socks an' have 'em hangin' out on the line I can starch an' iron two dozens shirts before you can count from one to nine I can scoop up a great big dipper full of lard from the drippin's can Throw it in the skillet, go out an' do my shopping, and be back before it melts in the pan'Cause I'm a woman W-O-M-A-N I'll say it again"

"I said, "Take it easy, baby, I worked all day And my feet feel just like lead You got my shirt tails flyin' all over the place And the sweat poppin' out of my head"She said, "Hey, Bossa Nova baby, keep on workin' 'Cause this ain't no time to quit" She said, "Go, Bossa Nova baby keep on dancin' I'm about to have myself a fit""

"Her hair is soft and her eyes are oh so blue She's all the things a girl should be, but she's not you She knows just how to make me laugh when I feel blue She's everything a man could want, but she's not you"

"They say the neon lights are bright on Broadway They say there's always magic in the air But when you're walkin' down that street And you ain't had enough to eat The glitter rubs right off and you're nowhere"

"We got married in a fever, hotter than a pepper sprout, We've been talkin' 'bout Jackson, ever since the fire went out. I'm goin' to Jackson, I'm gonna mess around. Yeah, I'm goin' to Jackson, Look out Jackson town."

"Is that all there is? Is that all there is? If that's all there is, my friends Then let's keep dancing Let's break out the booze and have a ball If that's all there is"

"We should treat computers as fancy telephones, whose purpose is to connect people. Information is alienated experience. Information is not something that exists. Indeed, computers don't really exist, exactly; they're only subject to human interpretation. This is a strong primary humanism I am promoting. As long as we remember that we ourselves are the source of our value, our creativity, our sense of reality, then all of our work with computers will be worthwhile and beautiful."

"I'm hoping the reader can see that artificial intelligence is better understood as a belief system than as a technology."

"The quest to rationally prove the possibility of sentience in a computer (or perhaps in the Internet) is the modern version of proving God's existence. ...eventually a cybernetically minded twenty-first century version of Kant will appear in order to present a tedious "proof" that such adventures are futile."

"People are demonstrably insane when it comes to assessing human sentience."

"There has been over a decade of work worldwide in Darwinian approaches to generating software, and... nothing has arisen from the work that would make software in general any better."

"If anything, there's a reverse Moore's Law observable in software: As processors become faster and memory becomes cheaper, software becomes correspondingly slower and more bloated, using up all available resources."

"Software breaks before it bends, so it demands perfection in a universe that prefers statistics."

"Evolution has never found a way to be any speed but very slow."

"The problem is that in every example we know, a layer that can change fast also can't change very much."

"The great thing about crummy software is the amount of employment it generates."

"There is no difference between machine autonomy and the abdication of human responsibility."

"The greatest crime of Marxism wasn't simply that much of what it claimed was false but that it claimed to be the sole and utterly complete path to understanding life and reality."

"There is nothing more gray, stultifying, or dreary than life lived inside the confines of a theory."

"Digital information is really just people in disguise."

"You shouldn't hear the guitar by itself. It should be part of the drums so it sounds like the drummer is playing chords -- like the snare is in A or the hi-hat in D minor. You only notice the guitar when it's not there."

"Planning to make something big is like planning to make a Nobel Prize winner during sex. You just have to wait and see."

"Just a spoonful of sugar helps the medicine go down."

"Though we adore men individually, we agree that as a group they're rather stupid."

"The future states that there is no time other than the collapsation of that sensation of the mirror of the memories in which we are living. Common knowledge, but important nonetheless."

"I was on the football team because I wanted to experience the different iconic social classes of high school. So football for me was an attempt to socially integrate in an interesting way. And then I didn’t like it anymore and stopped doing it and focused more on drama and science and other forms of art and music."

"You can have a lot of fun in a New York minute. But there's some things you can't do inside those city limits. Ain't no closing time, ain't no cover charge. Just country boys and girls gettin' down on the farm."

"I'm down here in Mexico, sick as a dog. My head is poundin' in this border town fog. Down to my last dime and comin' apart at the seams. I've messed up in Mexico, livin' on refried dreams."

"I like it, I love it, I want some more of it. I try so hard, I can't rise above it. Don't know what it is 'bout that little gal's lovin', but I like it, I love it, I want some more of it."

"Just to see you smile, I'd do anything. That you wanted me to when all is said and done. I'd never count the cost. It's worth all that's lost. Just to see you smile."

"I'm gonna live where the green grass grows, watch my corn pop up in rows. Every night, be tucked in close to you. Raise our kids where the good Lord's blessed. Point our rocking chairs towards the west. Plan our dreams where the peaceful river flows. Where the green grass grows."

"I had a barbecue stain on my white T-shirt. She was killin' me in that mini-skirt. Skipping rocks on the river by the railroad tracks. She had a suntan line and red lipstick. I work so hard for that first kiss and a heart don't forget, something like that."

"You're more than another, there could never be another. To make you feel the way you do. Ohh, we just get closer. I'd fall in love all over. Every time I look at you. I don't know where I'd be, without you here with me. Life with you makes perfect sense, my best friend."

"The urge to run, the restlessness. The heart of stone I sometimes get. The things I've done for foolish pride. The me that's never satisfied. That face that's in the mirror. When I don't like what I see. I guess that's just the cowboy in me."

"Now it feels like no one ever left me out in the rain, cold words still remain unspoken. And I never got lost, spent years in the dark. You're here, now my heart's unbroken. When I see you smile, fill my soul again, and I'm unbroken."

"She's my kind of rain, hey, hey-hey. Like love from a drunken sky-aye-yai-yai. Confetti falling down on mine. She's my kind of rain."

"I may be a real bad boy, but baby, I'm a real good man."

"And all I wanna do is let it be and be with you and watch the wind blow by. And all I wanna see is you and me go on forever like the clear blue sky. Slowly, there's only you and I. And all I wanna do is watch the wind blow by."

"I went skydiving, I went rocky mountain climbling, I went 2.7 seconds on a bull named Blue Manchu. And I loved deeper, and I spoke sweeter, and I gave forgiveness I'd been denying. And he said "Someday, I hope you get the chance to live like you were dying.""

"Back when a hoe was a hoe. Coke was a coke. And crack's what you were doing. When you were cracking jokes. Back when a screw was a screw. The wind was all that blew. And when you said I'm down with that. Well, it meant you had the flu. I miss back when. I miss back when. I miss back when."

"One, two, three like a bird I sing, 'cause you given me the most beautiful set of wings. I'm so glad you're here today, 'cause tomorrow I might have to go and fly away. Fly away, fly away, fly away, fly away."

"Girl, you don't know what you're puttin' through. It's a business doing pleasure, a business doing pleasure with you."

"Smooth as the hickory wind that blows from Memphis down to Apalachicola. It's "Hi, y'all, did you eat well? Come on in, I'm sure glad to know ya." Don't let this old gold cross and this Allman Brothers t-shirt throw ya. It's cicadas making noise with the Southern voice."

"Ooh, ooh, ooh, I wanna go crazy, you can go crazy too. Ooh, ooh, ooh, I wanna go crazy, I wanna go crazy with you. Everybody sayin' "Woah, how sweet it is. Woah." Yeah, it felt good on my lips."

"I ain't no angel, I still got a few more dances with the devil. I'm cleaning up my act little by little. I'm getting there. I can finally stand the man in the mirror I see. I ain't as good as I'm gonna get, but I'm better than I used to be."

"She slides in and you rode down Main Street, you turn right when that red light turns green. Sun sets now, you're half way to heaven. She picks a song, you turn it up to 11, you say "Do you wanna?" and she says "Hell yeah." So you hit the party, all your buddies are jealous. Someday, you'll be looking back on your life at the memories, this is gonna be one of those nights."

"Kisses sweeter than Tupelo honey. Little bit crazy like New Orleans. Memphis blue and Daytona sunny. Soft as cotton in some cut-off jeans. Don't you know, ain't nothing in the whole wide world like a Southern girl."

"Meanwhile back at mama's. The porch light's on, come in if you wanna. Supper's on the stove and beer's in the fridge. Red sun sinkin' out low on the ridge. Games on the tube and daddy smokes cigarettes. Whiskey keeps his whistle wet. Funny the things you thought you'd never miss. In a world gone crazy as this."

"I don't ever wanna wake up, looking into someone else's eyes. Another voice calling me baby on the other end of the phone. A new girl putting on her makeup before dinner on Friday night. No, I don't ever wanna know. Oh, oh. No other shotgun rider, beside me, singin' to the radio. Oh, oh. Oh, oh."

"It ain't like midnight and cigarette smoke. It ain't like watered down whiskey and coke. I guess some things just don't mix like you hope. Like me and you. And diamond rings and old barstools."

"'Cause when you got love, like we got love. I'm holding on to heaven, holding onto you. When you got one, like I got one. Anyway you looking, it's a hell of a view. Don't know where we're gonna be, but I know we're be sitting on top of the world. So keep hanging onto me. Yeah, don't you wanna be sitting on top of the world? Top of the world."

"Hold the door, say please, say thank you. Don't steal, don't cheat, and don't lie. I know you got mountains to climb, but always stay humble and kind. When the dreams you're dreamin' come to you. When the work you put in is realized. Let yourself feel the pride, but always stay humble and kind."

"I'll always be a fan of ol' stray dogs and guitars playin'. One room churches, back road walks and front porch swingin'. Sunset skies, bonfire nights, I love the simple things. That's how I'll always be."

"I was frustrated waiting tables when I knew I could make video... I didn't have any professional experience or a portfolio of work, so I decided to make stuff on my own for free."

"My friends liked it. My family liked it. I thought, 'If they all like it why can't everyone like it?' I knew I could get an audience."

"There are two things in life that keep me motivated, a cup of coffee and a second cup of coffee."

"I am so daunted by [reputation] that I never think about it. It is a thing bigger than I am capable of perceiving. Other people are more aware and concerned with it than I could ever allow myself to be."

"I don't know what my image is. I went to France to publicize Marvin's Room, and one really smart young woman journalist said to me "You know, what I told people I was going to interview Meryl Streep, they were so excited...all ze woman in my office, they love you so much. But ze men - they are afraid of you.""

"Hollywood to me is what it is to you. It's something other than what I am. I sit outside it."

"I live simply. I don't buy a lot of fashion!"

"Well, aren't we all grateful to be alive? I just know lots of people … at my age, I've lost a lot of people in my life and I'm very grateful to be here. That's what I mean."

"I don't really. In our business, you're not kicked out necessarily …"

"No! But they were here [in Los Angeles]. Here they were surprised, because it was difficult to finance, the film. A lot of the executives would say, 'I just don't get it.'"

"Half of me is Streep and the other half is Wilkinson from Lincolnshire so I come by it honestly, this part."

"I am nothing but these people, and as an actor I'm always trying to call up lives and the reason I know these things as an actor is because I have the DNA of all these crazy people."

"I'm so sorry to hear this, but this is what it is. It makes it feels like it's sort of my fault on some level, but it also connect be to those events, those first encounters between the two cultures must have been raw, terrifying, brutal and final. conflicts in early American history, known as King Philip’s War, or Metacom’s War, Lawrence Wilkinson defended his town in the face of fierce violence from the Native Americans."

"[On the situation for women in Afghanistan] Today in Kabul a female cat has more freedom than a woman. A cat may go sit on her front stoop and feel the sun on her face, she may chase a squirrel in the park. [...] A squirrel has more rights than a girl in Afghanistan today because the public parks have been closed to women and girls by the Taliban. A bird may sing in Kabul, but a girl may not in public. This is extraordinary. This is a suppression of the natural law. The way that this culture, this society has been upended, is a cautionary tale for the rest of the world."

"I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me. I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping. I hate conflict and comparisons. I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals. And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience."

"One of my only role models as a young woman was Meryl Streep and, specifically, her character in Out of Africa. I would watch the movie whenever I needed inspiration because Ms. Streep so brilliantly portrayed an incredibly courageous woman who stands alone to save her plantation. Her performance and the strength of her character were tangible examples of how I wanted to be in the world, and I soaked it in and learned from her experience."

"Streep, who was born in New Jersey, is known to have historic family ties to Pennsylvania and Rhode Island."

"Meryl Streep could obviously have made it to the screen on looks alone. The camera embraces her. Lucky camera. Many women would kill for her slender, fashion-model figure, for that ash-blond hair, oval face, porcelain skin and those high, exquisite cheekbones. Her eyes mirror intelligence; their pale blue sparkle demands a new adjective: 'merulean]. Only a slight bump down the plane of her long, patrician nose redeems her profile from perfection."

"Even [being] in a rehearsal period, with Meryl Streep watching, is a behind-tightening experience."

"Her roots go back to England: We traced her back to her eighth grand-grandfather born in England in 1620. In 1645, he shows up in Providence, Rhode Island, as one of the founding fathers of Rhode Island."

"Meryl Streep’s image is composed of two distinct image clusters centered on her renown as a great actress and her reputation as a devoted wife and mother. A more muted aspect of her star persona – one that is often masked as merely an offshoot of her maternal devotion –is her social activism."

"And at this stage in her seemingly charmed life, when she's moved to Los Angeles and has three children in three different private schools and is redoing a house on the Westside and worrying about fabric samples, she's careered off the beaten path of high drama, if temporarily, to cultivate her comedic connections."

"With hair, heels, and attitude, honey, I am through the roof."

"If you can't love yourself how in the hell you gonna love somebody else? Say amen!"

"She's like a female phenomenon, she's a glamazon. A female phenomenon. A glama-z-a-a-on"

"We love you and you're so welcome here. You know we as gay people we get to choose our family you know we get to choose the people that we are around. You know was I'm saying. I am your family, we are a family here. I love you."

"People ask, "Why do you dress like a woman?" I don't dress like a woman. I dress like a drag queen."

"I will not be ignored. I am here to stay."

"What other people think of me is not my business. What I do is what I do. How people see me doesn’t change what I decide to do. I don’t choose projects so people don’t see me as one thing or another. I choose projects that excite me."

"If you have goals and the stick-with-it-ness to make things happen, people will feel threatened by you, especially if your goals don’t include them. They believe that if you take a piece of pie, then that leaves less pie for them. Seeing you follow your dreams leaves them realizing that they’re not following theirs. In truth, there is unlimited pie for everyone!"

"The point about pop culture is that so much of it is borrowed. There's very little that's brand new. Instead, creativity today is a kind of shopping process—picking up on and sampling things form the world around you, things you grew up with"

"Look at me--a big old black man under all of this makeup, and if I can look beautiful, so can you."

"All sins are forgiven once you start making a lot of money."

"I don’t have to explain myself. My frequency is very common and is open to anybody to tune in"

"Be very careful of what you allow to infiltrate your consciousness and subconsciousness. When you watch too much television, you'll start to feel inferior from all the commercials hard selling the idea that you're not complete unless you buy their product [...] The ad agencies appeal to your fear of not being wanted or loved. It's the same with the local news. They get you to stay tuned with a constant stream of fear tactics [...] It's as if our culture is addicted to fear and the flat screen is our drug dealer. Don't allow that crap into your head!"

"If you don't love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?"

"Drag is really about mocking identity. Drag is really about reminding people that you are more than you think you are – you are more than what it says on your passport."

"We had a very hostile period [towards drag] after 9/11, especially in America, that was very fear based. And right now, we are enjoying an open window, politically and culturally. But don’t be fooled – all of this is cyclical. I’ve seen the window open in my lifetime and I’ve seen it close."

"I’ve seen trends ebb and flow. I’ve seen progress and I’ve seen regression, not just in gay movements, but in all types of movements — whether it’s gender or sexuality or race. All kinds of different movements. And humans are fickle. Humans are very trendy. And they’re posers. If some economic change happens, it can all go to shit, honestly. And I’ve seen it happen in my lifetime. So do I trust that this is what it is and it’ll stick forever? I’m skeptical and I’m cautious."

"Like I said before, there are windows of openness in our culture. And then our culture closes those windows down just as fast. And I’ve seen it in my lifetime, time and time again. Right now I’m enjoying the freedom that we all have. But it could really all end. What happened in Germany in the early ’30s, no one could have imagined that — except for the people who had lived through that kind of thing before. And it’s all cyclical. So we have a certain freedom now. And I’m not just talking about gay people. I’m talking about everyone. We have a certain freedom now. But that could all change in a heartbeat."

"In a culture, you can choose fear or love. It’s been my experience and my observation that humans on this planet feel more comfortable with fear rather than love and openness... I do know what history tells us about humans. And humans, they actually don’t feel very comfortable with openness and freedom."

"I have been discriminated against by white people for being black, by black people for being gay, by gay people for being too fem. Did I let them stop me from getting to this chair?"

"You're born naked. The rest is drag."

"He/she is the host, mentor and inspiration of RuPaul's Drag Race, the ultimate drag queen competition. RuPaul reigns supreme in all judging and eliminations of the race. However, RuPaul, the man, guide the contestants in preparin for each challenge. The Nation's most outrageous, cutting-edge, talented and stunningly gorgeous drag queens are generally the participants. Rupaul also is the fabulous judge on the tv show Skin Wars and Skin Wars Fresh Paint."

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture."

"Hollywood is like high school with money."

"Playing music is something I would like to do my whole life."

"I came from a background of blues and rock based(music). I hadn’t listened to Jazz or even Classical Music until just recently. Listening to Stan Getz, you know, he is one of my favorite Saxophonists, so he’s influenced my sound and influences how I play this music. Right now."

"In 7th grade, I saw the Allman Brothers play at the Beacon Theatre. I also saw the Dave Mathews Band perform at Giant’s Stadium. Those concerts changed my life. I was inspired so much. In my heart, I knew that was the only thing I wanted to do with my life."

"It’s easy, it’s powerful."

"I think Bitcoin allows artists to be compensated for work in a more fair way."

"Believe in yourself."

"Dream big, when you’re up against it all, when you’re standing on a narrow bridge and you’re about to fall. Dream big, when you're blocked by a wall, keep on saying in your head, nothing is impossible. Dream big, and when your moment arrives, look up to the stars and thank God you're alive. Dream big, the power is inside of you. You'll be love for whoever you are and for whatever you do."

"You can't gain one thing without loosing something else. You can try to catch time, but try to catch a moment, it's better. Days pass, and months go by And the years come, and a decades gone It always feels like times are ending But they go on, and on, and on, and on."

"The sound of Mintzer’s guitar in the track “On the Road”, is haunting. However in context, the sound develops sentimental and inspiring feelings. The vocal melodies and harmonies are similar to Mintzer’s playing in their original shape/color and light floating tone. Thoughtful and poetic lyrics accent the effect, serving as a conduit for the entirety of the aforementioned musicianship."

"One hundred years from now Beatles songs may be so well known that every child will learn them as nursery rhymes, and most people will have forgotten who wrote them. They will have become sufficiently entrenched in popular culture that it will seem as if they've always existed, like Oh Susannah, This Land Is Your Land, and Frère Jacques."

"Music changed more between 1963 and 1969 than it has in the 37 years since, with the Beatles among the architects of that change."

"Paul McCartney may be the closest thing our generation has produced to Franz Schubert -- a master of melody, writing tunes anyone can sing, songs that seem to have been there all along. Most people don't realize that "Ave Maria" and "Serenade" were written by Schubert (or that his "Moment Musical in F" so resembles "Martha My Dear"). McCartney writes with similar universality. His "Yesterday" has been recorded by more musicians than any other song in history. Its stepwise melody is deceptively complex, drawing from outside the diatonic scale so smoothly that anyone can sing it, yet few theorists can agree on exactly what it is that McCartney has done."

"Music moves us because it serves as a metaphor for emotional life. It has peaks and valleys of tension and release. It mimics the dynamics of our emotional life."

"The story of your brain on music is the story of an exquisite orchestration of brain regions, involving both the oldest and newest parts of the human brain, and regions as far apart as the cerebellum in the back of the head and the frontal lobes just behind your eyes. It involves a precision choreography... between logical prediction systems and emotional reward systems. ...it reminds us of other music we have heard, and it activates memory traces of emotional times of our lives. Your brain on music is all about... connections."

"Studies of violin players by Thomas Elbert have shown that the region of the brain responsible for moving the left hand... increases in size as a result of practice."

"The emerging picture from... studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of master associated with being a world-class expert—in anything."

"Memory strength is also a function of how much we care about the experience. ...If I'm playing an instrument I like, and whose sound pleases me in and of itself... caring leads to attention, and together they lead to measurable neurochemical changes. Dopamine, the neurotransmitter associated with emotional regulation, alertness, and mood, is released, and the dopaminergic system aids in encoding the memory trace."

"Mozart had extensive training from his father, who was widely considered the greatest living music teacher in all of Europe at the time."

"We can say that speaking French "runs in families," but I don't know anyone who would claim that speaking French is genetic."

"On average, successful people have had many more failures that unsuccessful people."

"So much of the research on musical expertise has looked for accomplishment in the wrong place, in the facility of the fingers rather than the expressiveness of emotion."

"Joni uses a lot of alternate tunings; that is, instead of tuning the guitar in the customary way, she tunes the strings to pitches of her own choosing. ...Joni will talk compellingly and passionately about alternate tunings for hours, comparing them to different colors that van Gogh used in his paintings."

"Joni's genius is that she creates chords that are ambiguous, chords that have two or more different roots. ...Joni's music is as close to impressionist visual art as anything I've heard. ...harmonic complexity born out of her strict insistence that the music not be anchored in a single harmonic interpretation."

"Memory for playing a musical piece... involves a process very much like that for music listening... through establishing standard schemas and expectation. In addition, musicians use chunking... tying information together into groups, and remembering the group as a whole rather than individual pieces."

"The Harvard neuroscientist Gottfried Schlaug has shown that the front portion of the corpus callosum is significantly larger in musicians than in nonmusicians, and particularly for musicians who began their training early. ...Schlaug found that musicians tended to have larger cerebellums than nonmusicians, and an increased concentration of gray matter... responsible for information processing, as opposed to white matter, which is responsible for information transmission."

"Consonant intervals and dissonant intervals are processed via separate mechanisms in the auditory cortex."

"Contour refers to the pattern of musical pitch in a melody—the sequence of ups or downs that the melody takes—regardless of the size of the interval."

"Myelin is a fatty substance that coats the axons, speeding up synaptic transmission. Myelanation... is generally completed by age twenty. Multiple sclerosis is one of several degenerative diseases that can affect the myelin sheath..."

"The brain's synapses are programmed to grow for a number of years, making new connections. After that time, there is a shift toward pruning, to get rid of unneeded connections. ...Neuroplasticity is the ability of the brain to reorganize itself. ...the amount of reorganization that can occur in most adults is vastly less than can occur in children and adolescents."

"When a musical piece is too simple we tend not to like it, finding it trivial. When it is too complex, we tend not to like it, finding it unpredictable—we don't perceive it to be grounded in anything familiar. Music, or any art form... has to strike the right balance between simplicity and complexity..."

"The power of art is that it can connect us to one another, and to larger truths about what it means to be alive and what it means to be human."

"I think we will see personalized music stations in the next few years... controlled by computer algorithms... I think it will be important that... listeners have an "adventuresomeness" knob that will control the mix of old and new, or the mix of how far out the new music is from what they usually listen to."

"A gene that promotes nurturing behavior postcopulation could... spread throughout the population, to the extent that the offspring of people with the nurturing gene fare better, as a group, in the competition for resources and mates."

"Miller and his colleague Marty Haselton at UCLA have shown that creativity trumps wealth, at least in human females."

"Musical instruments are among the oldest human-made artifacts we have found. ...Music predates agriculture in the history of our species."

"The best estimates are that it takes a minimum of fifty thousand years for an adaptation to show up in the human genome. This is called evolutionary lag... Our hunter-gatherer ancestors had a very different lifestyle..."

"It is only in the last five hundred years that music has become a spectator activity—the thought of a musical concert in which a class of "experts" performed for an appreciative audience was virtually unknown throughout our history as a species. And it has only been in the last hundred years or so that the ties between musical sound and human movement have been minimized."

"Collective music making... may have historically served to promote feelings of group togetherness and synchrony, and may have been an exercise for other social acts..."

"The argument is that there may be a cluster of genes that influences both outgoingness and musicality. If this were true, we would expect to find that deviations in one ability co-occur with deviations in the other, as we do in WS and ASD."

"Music may be the activity that prepared our pre-human ancestors for speech communication and for the very cognitive, representational flexibility necessary to become humans."

"For language to be generative, children must not be learning by rote. Music is also generative. For every musical phrase I hear, I can always add a note... to generate a new musical phrase."

"Cosmides and Tooby argue that music's function in the developing child is to help prepare its mind for a number of complex cognitive and social activities, exercising the brain so that it will be ready for the demands placed on it by language and social interaction. ...Mother-infant interactions involving music almost always entail both singing and rhythmic movement..."

"During the first six months or so of life... the infant brain is unable to clearly distinguish the source of sensory inputs; vision, hearing, and touch meld into a unitary perceptual representation. ...inputs from the various sensory receptors may connect to many different parts of the brain, pending pruning that will occur later in life. As Simon Baron-Cohen has described it, with all this sensory cross talk, the infant lives in a state of complete psychodelic splendor (without the aid of drugs)."

"The coming together of rhythm and melody bridges our cerebellum and our cerebral cortex."

"In songbirds, it is generally the male of the species that sings, and for some species, the larger the repertoire, the more likely it is to attract a mate."

"Music's evolutionary origin is established because it is present across all humans; it has been around for a long time; it involves specialized brain structures... and it is analogous to music making in other species."

"Musical novelty attracts attention and overcomes boredom, increasing memorability."

"Primates, some birds, and humans have mirror neurons... that fire both when performing an action and when observing someone else performing... We've found mirror neurons in Broca's area, a part... involved in speaking, and learning to speak. ...our mirror neurons may be firing when we see or hear musicians perform ... in preparation for being able to mirror or echo them back as part of a signaling system."

"The multiple reinforcing cues of a good song—rhythm, melody, contour—cause music to stick in our heads. That is the reason why many ancient myths, epics, and even the Old Testament were set to music in preparation for being passed down by oral tradition across generations."

"As a tool for the activation of specific thoughts, music is as good as language. The combination of the two—as best exemplified in the love song—is the best courtship of all."

"Anyone who wants to understand human nature, the interaction between brain and culture, between evolution and society, has to take a close look at the role that music has held in the lives of humans."

"Music has been a shaping force... music has been there to guide the development of human nature."

"Music... is... a core element of our species, an activity that paved the way for more complex behaviors such as language, large-scale cooperative undertakings, and the passing down of important information from one generation to the next."

"The six types of song that have shaped human nature—friendship, joy, comfort, knowledge, religion, and love songs—I've come to think are obvious..."

"We may have had music before we had a word for it."

"Human process music using both absolute and relational processing... we attend to the actual pitches and duration we hear in music, as well as their relative values. This dual mode of processing is rare among species... These modes of processing and the brain mechanisms that gave rise to them were necessary for the development of language, music, poetry, and art."

"The point of art is to emphasize some elements at the expense of others."

"Music combines the temporal aspects of film and dance with the spatial aspects of painting and sculpture, where pitch space (or frequency space) takes the place of three-dimensional physical space... frequency maps in the auditory cortex... function much the way that spatial maps do in the visual cortex."

"Creative brains became more attractive during centuries of sexual selection because they could solve a wider range of unanticipatable problems. ...Humans who just happened to find creativity attractive may have hitched their reproductive wagons to musicians and artists, and... conferred a survival advantage on their offspring."

"The spiritual and emotional aspects of art are perhaps their most important qualities."

"Both poetry and lyrics and all visual arts draw their power from their ability to express abstractions of reality. ...that is a feature of the musical brain."

"Prior to the invention of writing, our ancestors had to rely on memory, sketches, or music to encode and preserve important information."

"Memory is fallible... not because of storage limitations so much as retrieval limitations."

"Fondness for stories is just one of many artifacts, side effects of the way our brains work."

"It's not just that we remember things wrongly, but we don't even know we're remembering them wrongly, doggedly insisting that the inaccuracies are in fact true."

"Thinking about one memory tends to activate other memories. ...If you are trying to retrieve a particular memory, the flood of memories can cause competition... leaving you with a traffic jam of neural nodes... leaving you with nothing."

"Evolution doesn't design things... The brain is... like a big, old house with piecemeal renovations done on every floor, and less like new construction."

"The information age has off-loaded a great deal of work previously done by people we could call information specialists onto all of the rest of us."

"An organized mind leads effortlessly to good decision-making."

"Most of us have adopted a strategy to get along called satisficing, a term coined by... Herbert Simon... to describe not getting the very best option but one that was good enough. ...Satisficing is one of the foundations of productive human behavior ...we don't waste time trying to find improvements that are not going to make a significant difference in our happiness or satisfaction."

"Recent research in social psychology has shown that happy people are not people who have more; rather, they are people who are happy with what they already have. Happy people engage in satisficing all of the time, even if they don’t know it."

"In 1976, the average supermarket stocked 9,000 unique products; today that number has ballooned to 40,000 of them, yet the average person gets 80%–85% of their needs in only 150 different supermarket items. That means that we need to ignore 39,850 items in the store."

"The most fundamental principle of the organized mind, the one most critical to keeping us from forgetting or losing things, is to shift the burden of organizing from our brains to the external world."

"You’d think people would realize they’re bad at multitasking and would quit. But a cognitive illusion sets in, fueled in part by a dopamine-adrenaline feedback loop, in which multitaskers think they are doing great."

"Out of 30,000 edible plants thought to exist on earth, just eleven account for 93% of all that humans eat: oats, corn, rice, wheat, potatoes, yucca (also called tapioca or cassava), sorghum, millet, beans, barley, and rye."

"Former secretary of state George Shultz, reflecting on forty years of United States foreign policy from 1970 to the present, said, “When I think about all the money we spent on bombs and munitions, and our failures in Viet Nam, Iraq, Afghanistan and other places around the world . . . Instead of advancing our agenda using force, we should have instead built schools and hospitals in these countries, improving the lives of their children. By now, those children would have grown into positions of influence, and they would be grateful to us instead of hating us."

"Multitasking is a myth. ...What's actually happening in the brain is sequential tasking. ...the brain is rapidly shifting ...so quickly and seamlessly that you don't really notice... What you end up with is attention that's been fractionated into little... bits and you're not able to actually sustain attention on any one thing. ...You're not saving time. You're wasting time."

"The brain is very good at self-delusion."

"A good rule of thumb is every couple of hours take fifteen minutes off. Naps are also very helpful, short naps. Even a ten or fifteen minute nap in the middle of the day can be the equivalent of an hour and a half of extra sleep the night before, and it can raise your effective IQ by ten points."

"This mind wandering mode turns out to be very different from the task engagement mode, because it's where thoughts that are loosely connected seamlessly flow into one another like in a dream. ...And you begin to see connections between things that you didn't see as connected before. ...non-linear kinds of thinking ...This is the mode of thinking where your most creative acts are likely to occur and where problem solving is apt to occur."

"Trying to be better than someone else is a pure waste of time. Strive to be better than you were yesterday."

"When I was back there listening to Eric play and I thought, 'Gosh, I hate it when the warm up guy is better than I am.' He was great."

"Concept art is first of all an art of which the material is concepts, as the material of e.g. music is sound. Since concepts are closely bound up with language, concept art is a kind of art of which the material is language."

"Concept art was meant to replace all of mathematics with an endeavor which involved a Rorschach-blot semantics; and which did not claim to be cognitive, at least not in the inherited sense. Mathematics had already been disconnected from claims of realism; and I was extending that disavowal to a disconnection from claims of a priori truth. Concept art's value consisted in beauty, a beauty which was non-sentimental. Later I would say that its value consisted in "the invention of new mental abilities." Popularity had nothing to do with whether this avenue was worth taking."

"I surmise that mathematical knowledge amounts to the crystallization of officially endorsed delusions in an intellectual quicksand"

"My early work was philosophic, what would be called epistemology, I was convinced I'd dicredited cognition. When somebody says that all statements are false, the obvious problem is that as an assertion it's self-defeating. I had to find a way to frame this insight which was not self-defeating and that's in "Blueprint", the essay entitled "The Flaws Underlying Beliefs." One has to do what Wittgenstein claimed to do in the "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus," which is to use the ladder and then throw it away. The way I devolved, moved out from, this position of strict cognitive nihilism, was with the idea of building a new culture which would depart profoundly from the scientific culture in which we live."

"Basically, at this time, I viewed any work of art as an imposition of another persons taste and saw the individual making this imposition as a kind of dictator."

"It's all false pressure; you put the heat on yourself, you get it from the networks and record companies and movie studios. You put more pressure on yourself to make everything that much harder. You say, 'Well, I'll get all screwed up and then it'll be a real challenge again.' So stupid—I've often wondered why people do these things. You're so much happier if you don't, but I guess happiness is not a state you want to be in all the time."

"I give so much pleasure to so many people. Why can I not get some pleasure for myself?"

"I owe it all to little chocolate donuts."

"I just love cocaine."

"Ollie's projection of emotions like frustration, agitation and shyness was masterful, and so was Stan Laurel's conception of the harried, ineffectual soul."

"A woman doing comedy doesn't offend me, but sets me back a bit. I, as a viewer, have trouble with it. I think of her as a producing machine that brings babies in the world."

"I'm telling you about a child in trouble. If it's pity, we'll get some money. I'm giving you the facts. Pity. You don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair; stay in your house."

"I learned from my dad that when you walk in front of an audience, they are the kings and queens, and you’re but the jester — and if you don’t think that way, you’re going to get very, very conceited."

"He keeps imitating himself, but he has much talent and I think in time he will do first rate comedy. I hope so. But he he's going to have to learn artistic discipline."

"CALLING Wind rocks the porch chair somebody home."

"MIRRORMENT Birds are flowers flying and flowers perched birds."

"SMALL SONG The reeds give way to the wind and give the wind away"

"THEIR SEX LIFE One failure on top of another"

"Artist should be left alone to paint or not to paint, write or not to write."

"I’ve always been highly energized and have written poems in spurts. From the god-given first line right through the poem. And I don’t write two or three lines and then come back the next day and write two or three more; I write the whole poem at one sitting and then come back to it from time to time over the months or years and rework it."

"Unless I have something already moving through the mind, I don’t go to the typewriter at all. The world has so many poems in it, it has never seemed to me very smart to force one more upon the world. If there isn’t one there to write, you just leave it alone."

"I write for love, respect, money, fame, honor, redemption. I write to be included in a world I feel rejected by. But I don’t want to be included by surrendering myself to expectations. I want to buy my admission to others by engaging their interests and feelings, doing the least possible damage to my feelings and interests but changing theirs a bit. I think I was not aware early on of those things. I wrote early on because it was there to do and because if anything good happened in the poem I felt good. Poems are experiences as well as whatever else they are, and for me now, nothing, not respect, honor, money, seems as supportive as just having produced a body of work, which I hope is, all considered, good."

"I couldn’t avoid being a poet. I was really having a pretty rough time of things, and I had a lot of energy, and poems were practically the only recourse I had to alleviate that energy and that anxiety. I take no credit for all the poems I’ve written. They were a way of releasing anxiety."

"Trying to make a living from poetry is like putting chains on butterfly wings."

"In the long poem, if there is a single governing image at the center, then anything can fit around it, meanwhile allowing for a lot of fragmentation and discontinuity on the periphery. Short poems, for me, are coherences, single instances on the periphery of a nonspecified center. I revise short poems sometimes for years, whereas, since there is no getting lost in the long poem, I engage whatever comes up in the moment and link it with its moment."

"[On inspiration]: I think it comes from anxiety. That is to say, either the mind or the body is already rather highly charged and in need of some kind of expression, some way to crystallize and relieve the pressure. And it seems to me that if you’re in that condition and an idea, an insight, an association occurs to you, then that energy is released through the expression of that insight or idea, and after the poem is written, you feel a certain resolution and calmness. Well, I won’t say a “momentary stay against confusion” (Robert Frost’s phrase) but that’s what I mean. I think it comes from that. You know, Bloom says somewhere that poetry is anxiety."

"Somewhere along the line, I don’t know just when, it seems to me I was able to manage the multifariousness of things and the unity of things so much more easily than I ever had before. I saw a continuous movement between the highest aspects of unity and the multiplicity of things, and it seemed to function so beautifully that I felt I could turn to any subject matter and know how to deal with it. I would know that there would be isolated facts and perceptions, that it would be possible to arrange them into propositions, and that these propositions could be included under a higher category of things — so that at some point there might be an almost contentless unity at the top of that sort of hierarchy. I feel that you don’t have to know everything to be a master of knowing, but you learn these procedures and then you can turn them toward any subject matter and they come out about the same. I don’t know when I saw for myself the mechanism of how it worked for me. Perhaps it was when I stopped using the word salient so much and began to use the word wikt:suasion."

"Poetry is everlasting. It is not going away. But it has never occupied a sizeable part of the world's business, and it never will."

"Ammon's poetry combines three unique types of diction, the 'normal' range of poetic language; the demotic register(including folk-speech); and the Greek/Latin derived phraseology."

"I think Ammons is a very great poet. I have a real quarrel with him, though... He's too rational for me. His poems proceed with a great, brilliant, rational mind. And for me... there's no peril in there. The irrational and the rational together make the kind of peril that gets enacted in poetry."

"The colon was Ammons 'signature', using it as an all purpose punctuation mark."

"Ammons poetry at Poetry Foundation"

"I think the way that you develop your own sound is you go through a process by which you imitate people sometimes very closely. With me, I would mimic people to the note. And then I think you form a collage of all these different players that you imitate, that you learn, and you form your own recipe. I think anybody that has an originality to them, it came from a pool of taking stuff from their predecessors."

"On my Fleischmann Hour from Rochester I went into a "rave" about the Victor record of ["It Must Be True"] as played by Gus Arnheim and his Cocoanut Grove Orchestra. From all reports that drift back to me, and from people that I know in California, Arnheim has the finest dance aggregation on the West Coast, and to my way of thinking, perhaps the finest in the entire world. It may sound like a rather broad statement, but I would be willing to back his organization against any other in any other part of the world. Although I have never seen them perform on the stage to what they have in the way of showmanship, from a pure musical standpoint I feel that they are unexcelled. Perhaps my great admiration for them is increased by the presence of Bing Crosby, formerly the lead in Paul Whiteman's "Rhythm Boys", who, in my humble opinion, has the finest recording voice to which it has ever been my pleasure to listen. If he doesn't capture all the feminine hearts in America through his records, no one ever will. He has the most unique style of singing I have ever listened to since I used to enjoy the records of Charlie Kaley."

"At the microphone he is truly a romantic figure. Faultlessly attired in evening dress, he pours softly into the radio's delicate ear a stream of mellifluous melody. He appears to be coaxing, pleading and at the same time adoring the invisible one to whom his song is attuned. The bare microphone seems strangely cold and unresponsive to his serenading."

"June 29, 2009, is the two-year anniversary of the first shipment of the iPhone. Not one of those people [whose 2-year service contracts expire] will still be using an iPhone a month later. ... I'm on a 10-year plan here. They are going to run out of gas way before we are."

"You gotta go do research on the way they treat like fucking chickens, man. Those chickens go through fucking torture before they’re processed and shit, have all sorts of fucking steroids injected in them and everything."

"I think our lyrics reflect reality. Maybe not someone else's reality, but definitely ours, you know? I don't write about bullshit and neither does my guitar player, Jerry Cantrell. I have a fascination with how brainwashed people get with religion and how they'll give up their money, their time and their whole life for a cause that they're sure is right, but I'm sure is wrong. I think there's a lot of people who are scared of life and living and they want to make sure they get to Heaven or whatever. I try to stay away from it as much as I can. I was raised in the church until I was 16 and I've disagreed with their beliefs as long as I can remember, so when I had the choice I chose not to believe in anything apart from myself."

"Once it got really big with Nirvana, Pearl Jam and Soundgarden, there wasn't much mentioned about us. All those bands put out records around the same time, and we hadn't put one out in two years. I don't think it hurt us, though. I'm glad we didn't get lumped together with them, because we're not those other bands."

"The facts are that I was shooting a lot of dope, and that's nobody's business but mine. I'm not shooting dope now, and I haven't for a while.... I took a fucking long, hard walk through hell. I decided to stop because I was miserable doing it. The drug didn't work for me anymore. In the beginning I got high, and it felt great; by the end it was strictly maintenance, like food I needed to survive. Since I quit doing it, I tried it a couple of times to see if I could recapture the feeling I once got off it, but I don't. Nothing attracts me to it anymore. It was boring."

"From song to song, the album [Dirt] changes from glorifying drugs to being completely miserable and questioning what I thought once worked for me. By the end of the album, it's pretty obvious it didn't work out as well as I thought it would."

"We [Alice in Chains] don't stuff our personal demons inside us, we get them out. It's therapeutic. I'm sure I'll never be completely 100 percent at peace with myself and the world. I'll always be bitching and moaning about something."

"[on Dirt] It's simple. One theme is: Drugs are bad. The other theme is relationships, bad. The last theme is: album, good. Maybe something this blatant and heavy and straight to the point might steer people away from being excited about the idea of trying heroin. There was nothing that blatant shoved in my face, discouraging me."

"Los Angeles Times: In a more recent phone interview, however, Staley proved more forthcoming, saying he isn’t at all surprised at the speculation inspired by the lyrics. Staley: I figured as much. People decipher our lyrics and take things too literally. It won’t change the way I write, though."

"Los Angeles Times: And is Staley’s temperament as dark as his lyrics would suggest? Staley: Most definitely, at least from noon to 11 p.m. It’s a product of our generation. People are angry. But I seem to do OK between 11 and midnight."

"Kurt [Cobain] and I weren't the closest of friends, but we ran into each other at shows and hung out a lot. I knew him well enough to be devastated by his death. I just don't understand it at all. The last time I saw him, he gave me a ride from QFC on Broadway to a friend's house, the whole way there, which was about a fifteen minute drive, he talked about his daughter. For such a quiet person, he was so excited about having a child, he really loved that little girl. About a month later I saw on the news, that he was dead."

"I don't think any drug that can cause brain damage, failing kidneys, hardening arteries, pain, and suffering should be made available. Drugs are not the way to the light. They won't lead to a fairy-tale life, they lead to suffering."

"People have a right to ask questions and dig deep when you're hurting people and things around you. But when I haven't talked to anybody in years, and every article I see is dope this, junkie that, whiskey this - that ain't my title. Like 'Hi, I'm Layne, nail biter,' you know? My bad habits aren't my title. My strengths and my talent are my title."

"I wrote about drugs, and I didn't think I was being unsafe or careless by writing about them. Here's how my thinking pattern went: When I tried drugs, they were fucking great, and they worked for me for years, and now they're turning against me - and now I'm walking through hell, and this sucks. I didn't want my fans to think heroin was cool. But then I've had fans come up to me and give me the thumbs up, telling me they're high. That's exactly what I didn't want to happen."

"I’m gonna be here for a long fuckin’ time. I’m scared of death, especially death by my own hand. I’m scared of where I would go. Not that I ever consider that, because I don’t. I was lucky enough to get a glimpse of where I was going to go if I did follow through with it. That makes me sad for my friends who have taken their lives, because I know that if your time is not finished here, and you end it yourself, then you gotta finish it somewhere else. There was a time when things seemed desperate, and I thought taking my life might be a way out. I made a couple of really weak attempts, mostly to see if I could do it, and I couldn’t."

"I was sitting with a friend one time, and I blanked out for about a minute. I had no control over my muscles, and it scared the shit out of me because I experienced what I guess could have been hell or, you know, purgatory or whatever. It was freezing cold, and I was spinning like I was drunk and trying desperately to take a breath. There was chest pain like I was gonna explode. If you gotta feel pain here, you gotta feel it somewhere else. I believe that there’s a wonderful place to go to after this life, and I don’t believe there’s eternal damnation for anyone. I’m not into religion, but I have a good grasp on my spirituality. I just believe that I’m not the greatest power on this earth. I didn’t create myself, because I would have done a hell of a better job."

"At the end of the day or at the end of the party, when everyone goes home, you’re stuck with yourself. There was a time when I couldn’t deal with that, and I couldn’t go places by myself. I needed to call up a friend to go to a 7-Eleven. I just couldn’t approach people when I was alone. Getting a place on my own was a step toward learning how to do that."

"I met Jerry [Cantrell] at a party, just out of the blue. I didn't think he was the coolest guy in the world or anything. He had no family in the area, so he's kind of struggling, didn't have any money or a place to stay or anything. And me being completely drunk, just offered this total stranger a place to stay and clothes, and food and musical instruments. I think two days later he moved his stuff up into the rehearsal room that I was working [out of]. And he's got himself a little 4-track, and kinda started out there, writing and jamming with some people. He was playing with some guys that I thought... you know, weren't up too pair with the music that he was writing. And I remember meeting Mike [Starr] and Sean [Kinney] prior to that."

"I know that the guys in this band [Alice in Chains] would do anything for me and I'd do the same for them. I know that I can trust them, and I think now they know that they can trust me."

"It's good to be with friends and family as we struggle to deal with this immense loss... and try to celebrate this immense life. We are looking for all the usual things: comfort, purpose, answers, something to hold on to, a way to let him go in peace. Mostly, we are feeling heartbroken over the death of our beautiful friend. He was a sweet man with a keen sense of humor and a deep sense of humanity. He was an amazing musician, an inspiration, and a comfort to so many. He made great music and gifted it to the world. We are proud to have known him, to be his friend, and to create music with him. For the past decade, Layne struggled greatly — we can only hope that he has at last found some peace. We love you, Layne. Dearly. And we will miss you... endlessly."

"We are deeply saddened by the passing of Layne Staley, a true original who will no doubt be remembered within the pantheon of rock's all-time greats. We stand in solidarity with our brother Jerry Cantrell in this hour of mourning and send our most heartfelt condolences to all of Layne's family, friends, and fans throughout the world. Today is a tragic day for those of us who know the difference between 'My Sacrifice' and 'Them Bones', between 'How You Remind Me', and 'Rain When I Die'.""

"It's something I'm still dealing with, and I still think like he's here. I miss him tremendously. I love him and have to move on. I'll remember him and respect the memories of what we did together and just enjoy life... and that's all I'll say about it."

"He was a one-of-a-kind singer. A lot of guys nowadays try to sound like him, but nobody can sound like him."

"At first, we were just going to call it "Kurt", but then I was like, "Why am I doing this? Staley dies and he doesn't even get on the front page of Rolling Stone. I have to do something" – not that I matter at all, but it matters to me."

"Yeah, it was crazy that it's called "The Day Seattle Died" because I didn't mean it to be that. I meant it to be as far as those two losses in Seattle [Kurt Cobain and Layne Staley's deaths] - to me that's the day Seattle died. I wasn't putting that together and thinking about the exact dates. I had met Layne Staley before when he was really sick. We were on tour with Jerry Cantrell, and Jerry knew I was a giant fan of Alice in Chains. It was Halloween night, we were in Seattle, and all of a sudden, a little dude comes up and he's got an old fishing hat on and he's kind of dressed up like an old dude - he is dressed for Halloween. I guess he didn't want people to see him because he's Layne Staley walking into a club in Seattle, and that would draw a lot of attention, so he got a little costume. He came backstage with me, and it impacted me so deeply to see him in that condition, because he was one of my biggest idols of all time. We opened a bottle of Jack Daniel's and drank it, and I just talked to him about everything for a long time. But the condition that he was in at the time affected me deeply - to see him look years older than what I thought he was. I knew when he left that night, that was the end - that he was going to go. I'm so thankful I got to spend that time with him. So that affected me, and I was like, "That's my hero, I'm going to write a song for him." And then the Kurt thing came in too. He was just as influential, but Layne I just felt more of a connection to - he was way darker, and I've always gravitated towards that stuff. Layne Staley's mom actually reached out to us to thank us for the song, and it was really beautiful. So, it had some impact. People really feel that song."

"The whole thing with the heart... there wasn't a real intention or a reason, it's just a collection of ideas that we put together. To me, we had our hearts broken by losing Layne and losing ourselves. And also it took a lot of that to get through this process and to even take the chance, and to stand-up and risk. It celebrates his life. He didn't get treated too well by the press when he was alive, and when he passed away, he pretty much got swept under the carpet, and the news basically been a punchline or a headline. It's kind of cool, he's kinda like Obi-Wan and death, he became bigger than life and people are starting to take a look at his contribution. It was an unfortunate fact that he had an addiction that ended up killing him, but there was so much more to the man and stuff doesn't go away."

"It was insulting the way people talked about him. People think he chose that fate, those drugs, but it’s not a chosen thing. Layne was the sweetest guy, the nicest guy, and the most talented guy you would ever want to meet. He was funny. He was one of the most least-judgmental people I ever met."

"God bless Layne. He was my favorite vocalist. I've never heard of a vocalist that had that much soul."

"“Man in the Box” hit in the middle of the “Clash of the Titans” tour — you talk about a tough fucking tour, opening up for Slayer, Megadeth, and Anthrax. They had a revolving headlining set, but still, Slayer’s fans would out-chant any of the other fans in the arena. “Slayer, Slayer, Slayer!” I remember playing Red Rocks, and the place is built ‘up’ — you could hit the stage with pretty much anything you throw from a certain distance. That was one of those landmark moments for the band. We got fucking massacred, dude. They started throwing stuff from the moment we came onstage. It was un-f*cking-believable. We were playing just looking up — watching shit come down, trying to avoid it, without running off the stage. After a while of getting pelted with all this shit — I don’t know how someone did this, but they snuck a gallon jug of some liquid, and they hocked this thing. It came down and crashed on Sean [Kinney]’s set. Layne got fucking pissed. He started grabbing shit and throwing it back at the audience. He jumped the barricades and started spitting back — throwing shit and flipping people off, just like they had been doing to us. So, we all did the same thing — we all followed Layne’s lead. We got right in their face, started kicking the shit they were throwing at us right back in their faces. And we finished our set. We’re like, “Fuck man, we better get out of here — we’re going to get killed.” After that show, there were a bunch of Slayer fans out by the bus. We’re like, “Oh shit, here we go.” We walk up to the bus — they were blocking us from getting to the bus — and they’re like, “You guys are alright. You guys didn’t puss out.”"

"Layne Staley was a lovely guy. It’s such a shame that he couldn’t overcome his demons."

"Some people, many who profess to be yogis, argue that vegetarianism is not a healthful diet for everyone. We agree that vegetarianism is not for everybody; it is only for those who desire happiness and peace. It is definitely a must for those who are interested in enlightenment."

"When we have a choice it is always best to choose kindness. Veganism is simply the kinder choice."

"If yogis are to come to the realization of the interconnectedness of life, then we must free ourselves from the conditioning that has caused us to think it is all right to exclude all the other animals from our own goals of peace, freedom, and happiness. … By working to alleviate the suffering of animals you are working at the cause level of human suffering."

"Yoga teaches that whatever we want in life we can have if we are willing to provide it for others. So if yogis want to be free, they understand that to deprive others of freedom will ultimately not benefit their project—to be free themselves. Following that logic, yogis abhor slavery and examine their own lives to find ways that they themselves might be condoning slavery and then eradicate those ways of acting. The fact is that animals who are raised for food are slaves. Making kind choices when it comes to the food we eat is one of the most basic ways to begin to ensure our own happiness and freedom. The cause for our own happiness, health, and freedom lies in how happy and free we can make the lives of others. The definition of others includes other animals."

"is a path to enlightenment through compassion for all beings. Jivamukti is a Sanskrit word that means to live liberated in joyful, musical harmony with the Earth. The Earth does not belong to us—we belong to the Earth. Let us celebrate our connection to life by not enslaving animals and exploiting the Earth, and attain freedom and happiness for ourselves in the process. For surely, the best way to uplift our own lives is to do all we can to uplift the lives of others. Go vegan!"

"To be a joyful vegan in the world today is to become involved in the most radical, positive, political revolution ever. A fork can be a weapon of mass destruction or an instrument of peace. Everything a vegan eats or consumes reflects a choice that takes into account the well-being of others rather than just ourselves—and that is a big difference. Each one of us can make a huge difference by choosing not to eat animals. By choosing kindness over cruelty, we contribute to the sustainability of our planet Earth and can even change the destiny of our species and all the species on Earth."

"To become a vegan is by far the best way we have at this time in history to contribute to peace on Earth. Being a vegan in the world today is to be involved in a nonviolent, direct-action protest against cruelty and an affirmation of kindness."

"The revolution will not be televised."

"You will not be able to stay home, brother. You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out."

"The revolution will not be brought to you by Xerox."

"There will be no pictures of pigs shooting down brothers on the instant replay."

"SWAT teams, battering rams, and no-knock warrants (immortalized by Gil Scott Heron and written about by James Baldwin), all predate contemporary hyper-militarized police forces."

"But I… don't believe that gender is just binary, and I never have, so that's what pulls me to sometimes politically identify as a lesbian, because I'm a feminist, and I feel like women are still so suppressed. I don't feel like we've come that far. But I also feel like there are people all along the spectrum, so in that sense, I feel like I would be more bisexual or just, you know, open-ended."

"The vegan diet in the western industrial society is important to me because I feel that if you open yourself up to eating dairy and meat then you’re taking part in basically a holocaust for animals. You know it’s very different if you’re in some tribal situation where people are fishing — like how we used to live. Maybe we would have eaten meat sometimes. But this kind of American idea we have of traditional eating is the cause of so much torture and misery. I don’t want to eat that – it’s gross. Animals are my friends and so it feels weird to eat them."

"The meat industry doesn’t want you to think about all the animals they are torturing and killing. And they definitely don’t want you to think about all the diseases related to eating meat. Their only concern is making a profit. A long time ago I made a decision to quit eating meat and dairy products. Animals are not ours to torture and dominate. If I was to eat factory farm meat or dairy products I would be taking part in the torturing and killing of animals. There’s just no way! Animals are my friends, so why would I want to hurt them?"

"I was just always really into having pets and felt a real connection with animals, and I guess as I became aware … from where it was coming to my plate it's just I couldn't eat it—it was disgusting. I stopped eating read meat … but I still ate chicken for a long time, and we were on tour and saw a chicken truck go by with these chickens that were just bleeding—it was just disgusting. And that was it. I haven't had a piece of it since. … We're not actually born ready to eat meat, it's something you have to develop and it's not something that you need to develop. The issue with the whole thing is just education and information. You know, most people don't think about it."

"My marriage, my relationships and family, my accomplishments with my band and my choice to be vegetarian are not only things I am proud of, they define me."

"Diet for a New America let me in on the truth that I kind of knew but didn't want to think about—about how animals are processed for food for human consumption. … Some of the most disgusting things you'll see is when corporations feed people, because they're bottom-line-minded. In that situation I think that respect for life is forgotten. … Think for yourself, think about what you eat, and try a little compassion."

"Jazz musicians have some outlaw in them somewhere if they are serious about this music...The is no valid motivation for it other than love– outlaw motivation in a profit-motivated society."

"When I was in eighth grade there was a movie called Willard, about a rat, and I fell in love with rats. I wanted one … so one guy suggested that I call Hershey Medical Center … So I called and they said … "What experiment is it for?" I said, "I don't wanna experiment on it, I just want it for a pet!" And they said, "Well, we can't do that." … About two weeks later, I go out to the mailbox, and there's this thing from the [American Anti-Vivisection Society]. Lo and behold, I'm looking through all these different experiments and I see a rat there, spread wide open, and it said some of the experiments [were] done at Hershey med center. So boom! I put two and two together, and I decided to do a report in school about it. I took advanced bio and you had to dissect cats, and I started [asking] questions, "Where'd the cat come from?", and that really ruffled some feathers. "I'm not gonna do this, you know." So basically I got thrown out of advanced bio. From that point on I became an antivivisectionist. … [Things] are changing. When I went vegetarian it was really hard on the road, and that was just eight years ago. And I see people doing it twenty, twenty-five years, traveling, and it's like, wow! … I think on a very basic level people wanna do the right thing. And if we continue to focus on that part of them that wants to do the right thing, we can win maybe at the next generation or the one after that."

"Everything I've been through, twenty–nine years strung out on dope, the hard time in prison, and an endless obsession with romantic entanglements——were parts of a journey that I'm just now beginning to understand."

"I've been blessed with playing the drums and having a young mind and staying healthy. I’m a vegetarian, I take good care of myself. I'll be the last Skynyrd standing. All those guys smoke themselves to death. They all drank themselves to death, drugs. … I still have stainless steel from the knee down in my right leg; I have bone against bone against stainless steel against nerve ending. Every step I take is painful, but when I play drums I push everything away, I get into the zone and I do what I’m supposed to do. … I play Lynyrd Skynyrd music because that's who I am. Everything else has been taken from me, my reputation, my world, my money has all been stolen from me by people that I thought loved me. However they can't take away my ability to play drums."

"The campaign I’m donating my rotten face for is ‘Dead things should be buried, not eaten.’ Being a vegetarian, it kind of shows how gory it is to see ripped off arms and ripped off hands of people of our own species. But I think it brings a campy, disturbing and grotesque realization to the fact that that’s how animals are being treated, especially in commercial farming. … There’s been a lot of focus on cannibalism. Which is funny, because if you treat all creatures the same, then a lot of Americans are cannibals."

"I like big butts, and I cannot lie."

"My anaconda don't want none unless you've got buns, hon."

"Dial 1-900-MIXALOT."

"I was pretty much raised in an entirely vegetarian household. I wasn't aware that there was a whole community of vegetarians out there. There was a point where I said, "I want to understand the other side of this situation," and I ate meat for maybe three years. Then right around the time that I phased meat out and became vegetarian, I recognized that I was lactose intolerant. So again, I was completely naïve to the fact that there was a thing called veganism. After a few years, I started going to a lot of hardcore shows where everybody was and vegan. That was when I found out that there were other people that were like-minded."

"To most, death is an incredibly scary and taboo idea. provides a shoulder to lean on... and the important duty of easing the fears and doubts that naturally reside in our minds as we approach the end of our lifetime. There is nothing I am more proud or passionate about than being a part of this work. It is a life-long commitment for me. A passion that I find to be more gratifying than anything I have ever known. My hope is to inspire others to join me in this fulfilling journey."

"I’m vegan in my fashion and vegetarian in my food. I don’t buy any leather goods or anything made from animal products – no down, nothing. It’s something people should be mindful of. … I think because I came to live in L.A. the transition was simple because vegetarianism is so common there. And I didn’t feel like I was missing that much by being a vegetarian. … I had a moment about 9 years ago. It was so odd. I was talking to my then-boyfriend and he was talking about a fishing trip and how he’d never had the experience of ‘killing’ his food. Even though I had fished my whole life, something just snapped in me and I said, I’m not eating this anymore. … Being vegan is more challenging, especially when it comes to going out to eat. But I found Chicago has great vegetarian and vegan restaurants. … Healthwise, I notice when I wasn’t eating meat anymore I felt so much lighter."

"I've always grown up with animals and I just felt like, that, animals were always family to me. And so, I am a complete lover of animals, and anything I can do to support them, that’s really my goal and job. … I always call my dogs "kids" and so anytime a child can associate that type of love of an animal as they would with another human being, I definitely think that's going to kind of help our culture as we are going along. Of course in the Bible, God gave man dominion over animals … I definitely believe that dominion is not taking it and beating them but just showing them the way. Showing them that you love them, that you are concerned about them, you want to watch them grow up to be the best animals that they could possibly be."

"No steak "every now and then," no ribs, no burgers, none of that. … Culturally there needs to be a change, and why not start with myself?"

"[Being vegan] improved my performance off and on the field. Plant-based foods have no cholesterol, so I don’t have a cholesterol issue. My blood pressure is good, and the toxicity level in my body is good. You’re able to take more energy from plant-based sources than animal-based sources. The list goes on, and it translates to the field and how I recover."

"I'm like the highest form of gay: I'm a drag queen."

"People find themselves in ruts all the time. You're in a complacent lifestyle where you work 9 to 5 and then you add a mortgage and kids. You feel trapped, but guess what, brother? You constructed that life. If you're OK with it, there's nothing wrong with that. But if you've got unease, then you've got to make a change."

"The movie business is very difficult but the music business is just impossible. So I'll play in bands and record and play songs with other people, but for me it's a form of expression that all I need is me. I don't need cameras or agents, I can just have a piano and sing and feel totally verified."

"I like to stay busy, I like to stay focused, and I like to stay creative. Without being creative I'd be dead."

"Grab love of life every day. Because we're all gonna die. It's difficult to live that way. Most people are afraid to. Or can't. I find it very difficult."

"Our friendship has remained all that time, and I'm godfather to his kids, but then when The Hurt Locker came around, I just knew there was a lot of opportunity that was coming in, and just couldn't really manifest any opportunities because things were busy."

"I want my personal life to be personal... And I don't care if you're talking about things that are true, you're still talking about my personal life."

"I like to play unpredictable characters, and I like to be unpredictable in what movie I'll do. I want to skip to work. I don't want to repeat anything. What the future holds, I don't know, but that's what I like. I'll take any risk there is."

"I think it's great to be a part of a franchise that is successful. Any franchise is successful because it's a continuation and people have seen it."

"I want to be a good human being."

"I don't do well with expectation in my life. All I can do is do the best that I can do."

"I love the idea of going to work and having to fight and learn a new skill set, whether it's muay Thai or Kali or Filipino stick fighting. To me, it's like college for life."

"I don't really think there's much difference between a character actor and a leading man besides aesthetics."

"Getting to play with Thor's hammer while he stroked my bow."

"I got out of my record deal just so I could connect two cultures together."

"We figured out that these singers go to specific studios to record in Bollywood all the time. So if you’re a studio engineer, you see these singers on a daily basis. We reached out to the studio, pretending to have a lot of money, pretending to have a project coming in from Hollywood and saying we’d like to record with them, but we want this singer."

"I like visiting a lot of places, but I always am like, I’m just so glad I live in Baltimore. It’s like the perfect size city where it is a city and it’s large, but it’s also small enough where you can really feel like a part of a scene and a part of a community."

"I think the main thing I do every show, and I guess most performers do this, is engaging the audience, but I like to engage the audience in a very direct way right off the bat by starting the show with giving them the choice to participate or not because that’s the choice. By choosing to participate or not, you’re participating. Do you know what I mean? And I can figure out what their level of participation’s going to be and where I can go into crowd."

"I've got two tickets to paradise Won't you pack your bags, we'll leave tonight."

"Baby hold on to me Whatever will be, will be The future is ours to see So baby hold on to me."

"Don't be thinkin' 'bout what's not enough,now baby Just be thinkin' 'bout what we got think of all my love, now I'm gonna give you all I got. So baby hold on to me Whatever will be, will be the future is our to see When you hold on to me."

"Oh, there's got to be true love, true love True love just to make it Oh, there's got to be true love, true love True love just to take it."

"Well you're looking for another end Doing time But you still can't turn away Well you're looking for a real friend Any kind That wants to play the games you play On this side of paradise Where you're never going to go through twice Stay tuned at any price To this side of paradise."

"You've got to keep yourself well amused Pay no attention to the faulty news Set yourself on automatic cruise Sometimes you just got to lose On this side of paradise You're never going to go through twice Stay tuned at any price To this side of paradise. You're on this side of paradise."

"We are story gatherers. That's what we humans do."

"The traditional ways and rituals of all of Earth's peoples are kept in containers of poetry, song, and story. It is how we know who we are, where we are coming from and who we are becoming."

"In my community, we are taught that leadership qualities include humility, compassion, a sense of fairness, the ability to listen, preparation and carry-through, a love for the people, and a strong spiritual center that begins with a connection to Earth."

"When she broke on Earth, the light in her was not broken. We cannot break light, nor can we destroy it."

"Poetry (and other forms of writing) can be useful as a tool for finding the way into or through the dark. Or a device with which to admire the complexity of the stories in which we have become entangled. Sometimes the only way out is by voice, following the music into the impossible."

"The most powerful poetry is birthed through cracks in history, through what is broken and unseen."

"It was all connected, this poetics of listening, word making, and dancing. There was power to transform, to lighten the heaviness of the burden of being human. That's how I came to understand the power of poetry and music. It was a tool, but more than a tool. Words and music evoked a state of mind that lifted us up when racial and historical despair threatened."

"Emerging from a story, a poem, the Earth, a time in history, or from the body of our mothers is sometimes explosive, chaotic, frightening, yet always awe-inspiring and humbling. We can use the energy to create fresh structures, or we can destroy or be destroyed. The energy can have power over us or empower us, and even what is destructive might clear the debris so that fresh life can emerge from embers or ashes."

"We must take care to feed the minds, hearts, and spirits of those coming up behind us--to offer songs, poems, and stories that will break open that which is hardened, expose that which is evil-minded or would harm, and remind us how we are constructed to bring forth beauty of thought and beingness."

"Even a lost place within yourself is a place, albeit liminal, a kind of border town. You can make a temporary home if you need to from found materials and shreds of forgotten dreams, and you can even dress to appear somewhat ordinary as you run away, a refugee from yourself. I rolled up the map of my known world and set it aside for some kind of strange autonomy. (Part Four: Diamond Light, p187)"

"Our physical living is held together by plant sacrifice. We eat, wear, and are sheltered by plants and plant material. Nearly all of our medicines are plant-derived. We need to take time with them, get to know them. (Part Six: Sunset, p287)"

"You were born of a generation that promised to help remember. (p23)"

"A family is essentially a field of stories, each intricately connected. Death does not sever the connection; rather, the story expands as it continues unwinding inter-dimensionally. (p30)"

"We are all here to serve each other. At some point we have to understand that we do not need to carry a story that is unbearable. We can observe the story, which is mental; feel the story, which is physical; let the story go, which is emotional; then forgive the story, which is spiritual, after which we use the materials of it to build a house of knowledge. (p32)"

"In the short-root mind, a kind of mind of a people whose children don't even know the names of their great-grandparents, there is no past. Everything is right now. This kind of mind has its roots in the material culture, in what can be accumulated. My great-grandfather reminds me that we need to keep within the long-rooted mind. Because of the longer roots we have a larger structure of knowing from which to take on understanding. (p78)"

"I marked myself once with a knife. I was disappearing into the adolescent sea of rage and destruction. The mark of pain assured me of my own reality. The cut could speak. It had a voice that cried out when I could not make a sound in my defense. I never made such a mark again. Instead I chose to slash art onto canvas, pencil marks onto paper, and when I could no longer carry the burden of history, I found other openings. I found stories. (North, p91)"

"When Sun leaves at dusk, it makes a doorway. We have access to ancestors, to eternity. Breathe out. Ask for forgiveness. Let all hurts and failures go. Let them go. (p171)"

"European and American settlers soon took over the lands that were established for settlement of eastern tribes in what became known as Indian Territory. The Christian god gave them authority. Yet everyone wanted the same thing: land, peace, a place to make a home, cook, fall in love, make children and music. (p19)"

"Every soul has a distinct song. (p19)"

"In the end, we must each tend to our own gulfs of sadness, though others can assist us with kindness, food, good words, and music. Our human tendency is to fill these holes with distractions like shopping and fast romance, or with drugs and alcohol. (p23)"

"Those of fire move about the earth with inspiration and purpose. They are creative, and can consume and be consumed by their desires (p25)"

"A story matrix connects all of us. (p28)"

"...I could hear my abandoned dreams making a racket in my soul. (p135)"

"I believe that if you do not answer the noise and urgency of your gifts, they will turn on you. Or drag you down with their immense sadness at being abandoned. (p135)"

"No one ever truly dies. The desires of our hearts make a path. We create legacy with our thoughts and dreams. This legacy either will give those who follow us joy on their road or will give them sorrow. (p149)"

"In the American mainstream imagination, warriors were always male and military, and when they were Indian warriors they were usually Plains Indian males with headdresses. What of contemporary warriors? And what of the wives, mothers, and daughters whose small daily acts of sacrifice and bravery were usually unrecognized or unrewarded? These acts were just as crucial to the safety and well-being of the people...For the true warriors of the world, fighting is the last resort to solving a conflict. Every effort is made to avoid bloodshed. (p150)"

"These fathers, boyfriends, and husbands were all men we loved, and were worthy of love. As peoples we had been broken. We were still in the bloody aftermath of a violent takeover of our lands. Within a few generations we had gone from being nearly one hundred percent of the population of this continent to less than one-half of one percent. (p158)"

"There are many of us and we're not just poets. We're teachers. We're dancers. Essentially, we're human beings. And you would think that at this time we would not have to say that. But we still are in the position, strangely enough, that we still have to remind people and the public that: We're still here, we're still active. We have active, living cultures and we are human beings and we write poetry. (2020)"

"We talk about needing food, clothing and shelter, but ... that's bodily. But we also need to feed our spirits, and we need to feed our souls, and maybe we even feed history and grow it one way or the other. (2020)"

"I think it’s easier to honor the male in our culture because it’s much more accepted. There are almost no truly powerful and sustained images of female power. None. Look at Marilyn Monroe? The Virgin Mary? And what images exist for Indian women? The big question is, How do we describe ourselves as women in this culture? It’s unclear."

"I've come to realize that what has motivated my art-making is really a strong need for justice, for "people" to be treated [with respect.] And then when I say people, I also mean animals and insects and the birds and the earth and the earth person that we are all part of — that there's a key element and that's respect. And my work has always been motivated by that need for respect."

"President Andrew Jackson went against Congress to remove Southeastern Native peoples from the lands there into Indian territory, or what became known as Oklahoma. Of course, we did not go willingly. There were several scuffles and fights and even massacres against this illegal removal. But we were force-marched from our homelands. I think a lot of America thinks it was only the Cherokee — or the so-called "five civilized tribes," that included the Muscogee (Creek) — but these kind of removals or forced migration or marches happened all over the country."

"I think a lot of America, when they think back in history and see Natives, we were hiding out in the woods, wearing rags and so on, but we had huge societies. I have a great, great, great uncle who had the largest horse-racing establishment on the Eastern Seaboard, a Muscogee (Creek) man and half Irish. And they wanted that, they wanted what we had."

"I remember at one point going out to do a story, just after the [1979] Church Rock uranium spill, and there were children out playing in the water and in the livestock and the Navajo speakers were saying, "We need a word." How do we come up with a word that will tell the people that even though you can't see it, there is something dangerous here that can harm you and you can't use these waters, when it was the only source of water for their livestock?"

"when I went to first grade, when we started to learn how to read, I was so thrilled about what happened with symbols and that suddenly it opened up a world to me. I read all of the books in the first grade classroom and was sent into the second grade, and it became like a hunger for me. I liked the sounds, of course, I like the sound that words make. I like the percussion, the percussive elements and the images and so on. Just like the same kind of thing I heard in my mother's song-making. But the more I read and the more the ability grew, the deeper I could read, the more stories and I could be transported in — much the same way that I could be in that kind of visionary dream world when I was younger. And when we get to about 7 — and I think this happens to a lot of us — we forsake those realms of knowing and understanding, and reading helped give that back."

"I’ll be in a car or a bus or a van or whatever, looking at the houses and the windows and all the storefronts, and thinking about all the different realms, all the different story realms, and how many — every place, every window, every doorway is an opening to a life — a whole different life, a whole series of stories. And it’s multiplied hundreds and thousands of times. And some don’t overlap at all. Some are in their very private universes; other universes are more expansive."

"I’m a great-grandmother now. I was a grandmother in my 30s and a teenage mother. And what that’s given me is a kind of a broader sense of the story field."

"we don’t live in a society, generally, that supports dreams as knowledge. And we’re not living in a place like that."

"think about it — about half of our lives, we’re out gathering information that we may not bring forth consciously, and for some of us, it’s like it’s a library that we go to when we need to know something. It works in that way."

"what happens in this country is that Natives are — our stories, our presence has basically been disappeared from the American story because if it’s true — if it’s true that we’re still here, and if it’s true that what did happen was, you know, was grand theft and massacre — then there’s something inherently broken with the story that needs to be repaired. The other thing, too, is that we are here. And yet, people expect us to be in our traditional outfits, if we’re recognized. They don’t recognize us unless we’re mascots or we’re wearing our traditional outfits."

"I’ve been around Natives all over the — all over the world, but there’s something about Oklahoma Natives, you know, something about a Southern kind of openness, which makes more holes for laughter to go through, or for the ironic to live."

"It’s important that, I think, that everyone realizes that they have a connection with the natural world; it’s not something that just belongs to the Indigenous peoples. We might be closer, because we’ve been here longer, to particular elements of it, but, you know, this is something that is inherently part of the legacy of human beings."

"it was that discipline of art which gave — you know, visioning is one way that — and the ability to vision and having tools for visioning — helps any of us out of almost impossible situations."

"Our class and our generation really shifted Native art, in the contemporary world art scene."

"I think of poetry as a kind of lyricism. I think of poetry as a place beyond words, that we — you know, the paradox is, we use words to get there."

"A poem can be like a pocket that can hold anything, almost anything. You can hold different kinds of time. It can hold grief, it can hold history, and it is often — a poem has come to me or through me, and it’s taught me what I needed to know."

"when you’re writing, and I think when you’re creating, too, it’s a large part of that act of writing or — whether it’s music or stories or poetry or drawing, or any of the — it’s — a large part of it is listening."

"Poetry and living — they’re often the same thing."

"I would think that everyone wants a place for their children to live, and to live peaceably, but why aren’t we included in — as human? You know, we’re still being excluded, and we’re still — it’s still there. Those same people that moved us are still there. The same people that signed off and drove us and forced us out of the South, into the — Tulsa, they’re still there."

"I have grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and children, and in the original teachings, we’re told that they’re all our children. And how can I — I have to think of them, and they’re the rudder of hope. I mean, that’s where we’re going, with them."

"Everything is about — I think even — all the teachings, ultimately, wind up — the stories, everything — wind up at a point of harmony. And when you wind up at that point, everything will be reckoned with."

"A lot of images [of Native Americans] are based on fairy tales or Wild West shows. We are human beings, not just people who have been created for people’s fantasy worlds. There’s not just one Native American. We’re diverse by community, by land, by language, by culture. In fact, we go by our tribal names, and there are 573 tribal nations."

"It’s about learning to listen, much like in music. You can train your ears to history. You can train your ears to the earth. You can train your ears to the wind. It’s important to listen and then to study the world, like astronomy or geology or the names of birds. A lot of poets can be semihistorians. Poetry is very mathematical. There’s a lot in the theoretical parts that is similar. Quantum physicists remind me of mystics. They are aware of what happens in timelessness, though they speak of it through theories and equations."

"I can remind people that they use poetry, go to poetry, frequently, and may not even know they are. A lot of song lyrics are poetry. They go to poetry for a transformational moment, to speak when there are no words to speak."

"I always play or perform music with my poetry. When poetry came into the world, it did not arrive by itself, but it came with music and dance."

"Audiences for poetry are growing because of the turmoil in our country–political shifts, climate shifts. When there’s uncertainty, when you’re looking for meaning beyond this world–that takes people to poetry. We need something to counter the hate speech, the divisiveness, and it’s possible with poetry."

"Every poem has so many poetry ancestors. How can we construct a poetry ancestor map of America that would include and start off with poetry of indigenous nations? Those strands would continue into the present with the wonderful young Native poets we have right now. I guess what strikes me is the diversity—the diversity of Native poetry, which was here and is here and is still growing, and the diversity of American poetry, which has roots all over the world—and I’ve always wanted to show that, ultimately, there’s a root system that’s connected all over the Americas, which is one body and all over the world. A healthy ecosystem is a system of diversity. That’s the same thing in poetry, different poetry streams. It’s the same thing with peoples in a country."

"America has always been multicultural, before the term became ubiquitous, before colonization, and it will be after."

"We must know the mythic structures that define us."

"There were no Native names in the American book of poetry when I began writing poetry, though there are many."

"Each of us is descended from poetry ancestors. It’s the same for any art, any occupation. There is a lineage of style, knowledge and culture passed from generation to generation, one artist to another. Ultimately all poetry is related in the family tree of poetry…"

"Poetry is the art that is closest to music, standing between music and narrative orality (which can be speechmaking, sermon or theater). Poetry is the voice of what can’t be spoken, the mode of truth-telling when meaning needs to rise above or skim below everyday language in shapes not discernible by the ordinary mind. It trumps the rhetoric of politicians. Poetry is prophetic by nature and not bound by time. Because of these qualities poetry carries grief, heartache, ecstasy, celebration, despair, or searing truth more directly than any other literary art form. It is ceremonial in nature. Poetry is a tool for disruption and creation and is necessary for generations of humans to know who they are and who they are becoming in the wave map of history. Without poetry, we lose our way."

"We're all putting energy out whatever we're doing... we're in a constant stream of energy, and we're either singing or making noise. (2009)"

"We are all born within a familial stream of connection. It grows us and in turn we feed it. We live in give and take. That's basic human law, and many indigenous cultures still consciously practice it. (2009)"

"Children are considered the continuance of life. They are spirits who have come to share the world with us. We have a responsibility to nurture their gifts, to teach them. A ceremony or gathering cements the relationship and responsibilities. The over-culture has infantilized children and the experience of children. And the over-culture keeps us as children so we do not question consumption and the needs of our souls. (Over-culture is a term I created to name the false culture that traps us economically, whose products do not feed our souls with filling cultural song-story-art food.) (2009)"

"For me, dancing has always meant the ability to move about in the world without question. (2009)"

"(What advice do you have for minority writers who are fighting to be heard or who are struggling for legitimacy in American literature?) Remember that you are born with gifts that need to planted and grown. This "American" culture is young and rootless. It is adolescent with an adolescent sense of time and place that is "here and now," with no reference or power rooted in the earth, ancestors, or historical and mythical sense. Value your community and what that has to offer and continue to reach out beyond what you know to grow fresh ideas, meetings between borders, new roots. (2008)"

"(What thoughts do you have for young and new writers coming up?) Those who write are assisting in constructing the next world, the next consciousness. Be open, aware, and study. Study with all parts of your being, not just your intellect. Some of your knowledge may come from books, most of it from other sources. Always allow yourself to be surprised. And, write. (2008)"

"Yes, we're still struggling to have a place here, though, ironically, we have a place. It's the fearful ones who try and keep us out who are still looking for a place. (2008)"

"Earth is larger than humans in size and consciousness. We're guests on this earth. Humans are just part of a larger creation. If it so happens we were given dominion, or males were-and I don't believe this at all and it's one reason I walked away from the church at thirteen-then we certainly won't have it next time around. We've done nothing but rape the earth of its resources and don't even turn around. We forget to say thank you. (2005)"

"(What do you believe/feel/know lies at the heart of your body of work?) JH: Compassion. Joy. (2003)"

"Really, all poetry is a prayer, you have to go to the center place, inside you, to write poetry. (1994"

"...it is what we are made of, the stories that we carry with us. Stories create us. We create ourselves with stories. Stories that our parents tell us, that our grandparents tell us, or that our great-grandparents told us, stories that reverberate through the web. (1994)"

"In the middle of all the tension and destruction, there is a laughter of absolute sanity that might sound like someone insane. Maybe laughter is the voice of sense. I always tell my students that you cannot take everything too seriously because at will kill you. If you carry bitterness and hatred around, it gives you arthritis, rheumatism, cancer. Certainly, I have to be aware of everything that is happening, but I can't let it kill me. (1994)"

"Alcoholism is an epidemic in native people, and I write about it. I was criticized for bringing it up, because some people want to present a certain image of themselves. But again, it comes back to what I was saying: part of the process of healing is to address what is evil. Evil causes disease, when something isn't settled. The very process of the healing is talking about it and recognizing it. Alcoholism is hiding, it comes out of an inability to speak. (1994)"

"...you pick up the saxophone again, I suppose it's like writing poetry, you are picking up the history of that. Playing saxophone is like honoring a succession of myths. I never thought of this before but: the myth of saxophone and here comes Billie Holiday and there's Coltrane. I love his work dearly, especially "A Love Supreme." That song has fed me. And all of that becomes. When you play you're a part of that, you have to recognize those people. (1993)"

"(In the dedication to In Mad Love and War you affirm that "the erotic belongs in the poetry, as in the self." Can you elaborate?) It has taken me years to divest myself of Christian guilt, the Puritan cloud that provides the base for culture in this country... or at least to recognize the twists and turns of that illogic in my own sensibility. In that framework the body is seen as an evil thing and is separate from spirit. The body and spirit are not separate. Nor is that construct any different in the place from which I write poetry. There is no separation. (1993)"

"I'm already tired of hearing about this madman Columbus and discovery. Yet, this quincentenary is important because crucial attention is being paid to the indigenous peoples of this america. I say there never was an "encounter." To have an encounter would be quite a groundbreaking event! That would require Euro-Americans and Europeans to meet native peoples with respect. I don't know that it's ever been done. There was always a hidden agenda, a hierarchy in which the lives of native peoples were counted as worthless, as were the cultures. What a tremendous loss for everyone! (1992)"

"I truly feel there is a new language coming about-look at the work of Meridel LeSueur, Sharon Doubiago, Linda Hogan, Alice Walker - it's coming from the women. Something has to be turned around. (1990)"

"I want to have some effect in the world; I want my poetry to be useful in a native context as it traditionally has been. In a native context art was not just something beautiful to put up on the wall and look at; it was created in the context of its usefulness for the people. (what do you hope your poems do?) JH: I hope that on some level they can transform hatred into love. Maybe that's being too idealistic; but I know that language is alive and living, so I hope that in some small way my poems can transform hatred into love."

"Poetry has given me a voice, a way to speak, and it has certainly enriched my vision so that I can see more clearly."

"Many people assume that all Indian people lived a long time ago in a certain in a certain way and wore certain clothes, so if you don't look like that now, you're not really Indian people; but all cultures change. In our case, the change has certainly been abrupt and shocking, and we have had to a struggle to maintain the heritage within that terrible upheaval...Maybe all artists now must struggle to understand the connections between the world of heritage and the present world. Those worlds certainly do converge and maybe poems are points of convergence or, in some sense, paintings of that convergence. Maybe the artist has always worked to find those connections, but I think the struggle is especially important in these difficult times when the illusion of separation among peoples has become so clear...*For me the illusion is that we're separate. That's the illusion."

"I think the natural movement of love is an opening, a place that makes connections...You have to be open in that way to write a poem that really works, and I think there's always love involved in the act of creation."

"There's an incredible relationship of guilt between native people and white Americans. It's an odd relationship. Many white Americans think native people have special spiritual knowledge or know certain tricks. Certainly there are some people who are more in touch with those things than others, but we all have prayer. Prayer was not just designated to native people, and there are no special spiritual qualities designated for native people. Of course, at one point we were all tribal people. Europeans were tribal people; all around the world the roots of all human beings were tribal."

"In the beginning when I was writing poetry, a poem had definite limits--I started out knowing definitely what I wanted to begin and end with, or one particular image that I wanted to stay with. Now I feel that my poems have become travels into that other space."

"I don't see time as linear. I don't see things as beginning and ending. A lot of people have a hard time understanding native people and native patience-they wonder why we aren't out marching to accomplish something. There is no question that we have had an incredible history, but I think to understand Indian people and the native mind you have to understand that we experience the world very differently. For us, there is not just this world, there's also a layering of others. Time is not divided by minutes and hours, and of everything has presence and meaning within this landscape of timelessness."

"People often forget that everything they say, everything they do, think, feel, dream, has effect, which to me is being Indian, knowing that. That's part of what I call "being Indian" or "tribal consciousness.""

"I realize writing can help change the world. I'm aware of the power of language which isn't meaningless words.... Sound is an extension of all, and sound is spirit, motion...Everything, anything that anybody says, it does go out and makes change in the world."

"The world is not disconnected or separate but whole. All persons are still their own entity but not separate from everything else-something that I don't think is necessarily just Native American, on this particular continent, or only on this planet. All people are originally tribal, but Europeans seem to feel separated from that, or they've forgotten it. If European people look into their own history, their own people were tribal societies to begin with and they got away from it. That's called "civilization."

"It seems es that the Native American experience has often been bitter. Horrible things have happened over and over. I like to think that bitter experience can be used to move the world, and if we can see that and work toward that instead of killing each other and hurting each other through all the ways that we have done it. (The world, not just Indian people, but the world.) JH: Sure, because we're not separate. We're all in this together. It's a realization I came to after dealing with the whole half-breed question. I realized that I'm not separate from myself either, and neither are Indian people separate from the rest of the world."

"It's like this, living is like a diamond or how they cut really fine stones. There are not just two sides but there are so many and they all make up a whole."

"Political means great movers. To me, you can define political in a number of ways. But I would hope it was in the sense that it does help move and change consciousness in terms of how different peoples and cultures are seen, evolve."

"Joy Harjo is one of the more powerful voices among the second generation of the so-called Native American Renaissance, the movement that arose in the late 1960s with N. Scott Momaday, James Welch]], and Leslie Marmon Silko. Through these works, extraordinarily innovative in content but also in form, these Indian writers for the first time bore witness directly to their native world, interpreting it from within and freeing it from the portrayals by white writers that had been at best ambivalent, if not thoroughly distorted. The arduous, agonizing reconstruction of the tribal past, the dramatic confrontation with white civilization, the existential and artistic itinerary through present-day America, the shady liminal area inhabited by mixed-bloods-such are the major themes of a literary corpus that has now grown to considerable proportions, one that within a span of thirty years has been acclaimed by critics and readers alike for its vitality and its prodigious variety of voices and styles."

"Joy Harjo has always been one of my favorite writers."

"The poems of Joy Harjo incorporate the aspects of identity, "children born, half-breed, blue eyes..." with the vision of spiritual life beneath the daily realities which face Indian women. She writes of earth, of change, and of the psychological genocide that is often so subtle we do not realize it exists. And she writes of the strength it takes to escape that destruction which often becomes destruction of the self."

"(Q: Who, other than yourself, are the important Native American writers?) NSM: Jim Welch...Louise Erdrich. Leslie Silko...Simon Ortiz and Joy Harjo are very good poets."

"It is my conviction that currently in the United States, more women than men are writing good and vital poetry, although there are fine male poets. This is our renaissance, our Elizabethan plenty. We have giants like Adrienne Rich, Audre Lorde, Diane di Prima and Maxine Kumin, we have rising powers like Joy Harjo and Celia Gilbert and Sharon Olds, and we have dozens and dozens of individual voices sharply flavored and yet of our time, our flesh, our troubles."

"Joy Harjo is one of the real poets of our mixed, fermenting, end-of-century imagination.""

"She's generous in her poetry, opening her sacred spaces and music to all, yet never naive or forgetful about hostility and hatred, as in "Transformations"... This is not forgiveness, turning the cheek. It's a claiming of power, the power of the poetic act, the courage and grace and knowledge it takes to reach, through "the right words, the right meaning” into that place in the other where "the most precious animals leave." It's about "tough belief," no sentimental gesturing. You hear it in the rhythms of Harjo's music, catching it in the bladed outlines of her images."

"… I think maybe the rural influence in my life helped me in a sense, of knowing how to get close to people and talk to them and get my work done. That might have helped some...to try and get to know people and get to know all kinds of people better and investigate their ills and their prejudices and their goods and their evil…"

"That disadvantage sometimes pushes you, you know, if you use it right, because you want to rid yourself of those things that hurt you emotionally when you're coming up."

"I think that the film being made there did an awful lot to dispel that. For the first time there – well, for the first time in the United States – there was a black man riding in that big crane, and he was the boss of a mostly white crew, about 200 people. They looked at this at first in utter amazement and eventually they were proud of me, because I was a local boy. It was very prideful for the Negro kids."

"The boys of my gang – there were six or seven of us – none of them lived to be men, to be 21 years old, except one. All of them are dead from some violence or other, shot or cut to death before they were men, by white society…"

"No wonder you get a Rapp Brown, no wonder you get a Le Roi Jones, no wonder you get a Stokely Carmichael. But you can’t really compare these kids with me, because my time was beyond their time. Black studies, the identification with Africa emerging, has instilled a lot of pride in black kids. But the black kids on the campuses are suddenly asking for separate classes and segregated dormitories. I’ve said to them, ‘Black people have fought and died that you might be here. These white kids will be the next leaders, and will reshape your lives for the next 200 years unless you get in the classrooms with them and help’."

"Once you're directing, you're kind of in a certain mode, where you're taking whatever is on the page and forming it into the film that you think it might want to be. So whether it's my writing or not, I still try to work with it in the same way."

"For me it was a lot like using music. I used it when I felt that it was right, when I felt like it was time."

"I grew up on the experimental cinema coming out of New York and San Francisco in the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s."

"Elephant, which won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year, is Van Sant's masterpiece."

"I've stayed in touch with Gus over the years, and there have been a couple of things that were looked at, but never quite worked. But I was always interested in working with him again, because he was so instrumental in the kind of actor I am. I worked with him at a really crucial part of my career. I hadn't worked since I was a kid, and then I worked when I was 19 years old. He really changed the way I thought about acting. So I was really eager to work with him again. The process was incredible. In some ways, it was like being back in '95 or whenever it was."

"It was such a privilege to work with Gus — a true luxury for me, as watching ‘My Own Private Idaho’ almost 30 years ago was an eye-opener for me, it made me understand who I am in a delicate way."

"I'm gonna be fighting for all my Hulkamaniacs!"

"What are ya gonna do, when Hulkamania runs willd on you?"

"With Hulkamainia running wild, I feel like 100 Supermen."

"Training, Saying your Prayers and eating your Vitamins, is definitely the right way to live."

"And Hulkamania will live for ever!"

"He (Benoit) was peaceful and kept to himself. I think it had to be something personal, a domestic problem between him and his wife. She was into devil-worship stuff. It was part of her (wrestling) character, but (she was) somebody who gets so close to their character, someone who gets into their character too much. Sometimes these people believe their own publicity."

"This is a simple divorce — there’s no custody, there’s just a big pile of junk that we’ve accumulated. We should split it however the judge wants it and walk away, but, you know, my wife’s lawyer has told different magazines there’s gonna be a war... This is the money that I saved for my family, and money that Linda could walk away with, money that I saved for my children, that they’re just, they’re just wasting and burning up."

"Hogan: I’m getting ready to cut some serious bait. [Inaudible] Brooke — my daughter, Brooke — [redacted], she jumped sides on me. Heather Clem: Mmm-hmm. Hogan: ‘Cause I shelled out two, three million bucks for her music, and [inaudible] I’ve done everything. Fucking with him day and night on the radio like a jackass, and he’s working with me to make…make work [inaudible] when [inaudible] really should call it a day and do the shit I did. [Eight-second redaction] Hogan: The son, he’s [inaudible] this black billionaire guy, Cecile. He basically did more for her in a year than anybody’s done. [Inaudible], he had one song, and after 10 months it should go to [inaudible] and [inaudible] and [inaudible]. [Inaudible sentence]. I try to be the realist, and ‘This is your option: You got a better option. [Redacted] said you can sign with [redacted].’ He’s gonna put 500 million behind [inaudible]. Right now there’s nothing else. We’re doing the best we can. Clem: Right. Hogan: So it gets to the point where…I dunno if Brooke was fucking the black guy’s son, or they’ve been hanging out. I caught them holding hands together on the tour. They were getting close to kind of [inaudible] the fucking [inaudible]. I’m not a double standard type of guy. I’m a racist to a point, y’know, fucking niggers, but then, when it comes to nice people and [redacted] Clem: We all are that way. Hogan: Yeah, cool, when it comes to nice people, you gotta…you can’t, you can’t say the… [Two-second redaction] Hogan: I don’t give a fuck if she [inaudible] [an eight foot tall?] basketball player. Clem: [laughs] Hogan: If we’re gonna fuck with niggers, let’s get a rich one! Clem: [laughs] Hogan: I don’t care if he’s a multi-billionaire. The thing is, now that you start doing these nasty emails…so somewhere, [inaudible] relationship, and now [inaudible] doesn’t want to talk to anybody, nanananana."

"Well you know when things were tough, you know I realized that this to shall pass. You know that this was just a temporary situation. I realized that you know as long as I made the right choice, you know and, and followed my faith more than what people were saying or the newspapers or the tabloids were saying and didn't get sucked into that, none of that stuff was real. The only thing that is really real is the stuff that’s gonna last forever – you know your faith and your belief in God. And knowing that you know that once you're a Christian, you've accepted Christ as your Savior. You're not gonna perish but you're gonna have everlasting life. That belief in itself and that faith is what's pretty much the only thing that is real to me you know. Everything else is kind of like a life situation but that's my life after life after life."

"Poop in my gym brother HH poop brother HH"

"Don’t even try to bull shit us brother HH"

"You know something? I’ve seen some great tag teams in my time. Hulk Hogan and oh yeah, the macho man, Randy Savage. But you know something? I see the greatest tag team of my life standing upon us getting ready to straighten this country out for all the real Americans. Even though you guys are real Americans, you better get ready because when Donald J. Trump becomes the President of the United States, all the real Americans are going to be nicknamed Trumpites because all the Trumpites are going to be running wild for four years. With the power of Donald J. Trump and all the Trumpites running wild, America is going to get back on track and like Donald J. Trump said, America is going to be great again. When I look out and I see all the real Americans, I think about how Donald Trump, his family was compromised. When I look out there and I see Donald Trump, I think about how his business was compromised. But what happened last week when they took a shot at my hero and they tried to kill the next President of the United States, enough was enough. I said, “Let Trump-a-mania run wild, brother! Let Trump-a-mania rule again. Let Trump-a-mania, make America great again.” You know something, Trumpites? I didn’t come here as Hulk Hogan, but I just had to give you a little taste. My name is Terry Bollea, and as an entertainer… I love you too. As an entertainer, I try to stay out of politics, but after everything that’s happened to our country over the past four years and everything that happened last weekend, I can no longer stay silent. I’m here tonight because I want the world to know that Donald Trump is a real American hero, and I’m proud to support my hero as the next president of this United States. Guys, I’ve known Donald Trump for over 35 years. Hold on a second. Hold on. I just had a flashback. I just had a flashback, man. This is really tripping. The last time I was up on stage, Donald Trump was sitting at ringside at the Trump Plaza. I was bleeding like a pig, and I won the world title right in front of Donald J. Trump. You know something? He’s going to win in November and we’re all going to be champions again when he wins. Like I said, I’ve known that man for over 35 years, and he’s always been the biggest patriot, and he still is. He’s always told you exactly what he thought, and he still does, brother. No matter the odds, he always finds a way to win. When he’s back in our White House, America is going to start winning again. you know, guys, over my career, I’ve been in the ring with some of the biggest, some of the baddest dudes on the planet, and I’ve squared off against warriors, ooh, yeah, savages, and I’ve even, like I said, body slammed giants in the middle of the ring. I know tough guys but let me tell you something, brother, Donald Trump is the toughest of them all. They’ve thrown everything at Donald Trump. All the investigations, the impeachments, the court cases, and he’s still standing and kicking their butts. We never had it better than the Trump years. Back then, we had a thriving economy, we had strong borders, we had safe streets, we had peace and respect around the world, but then we lost it all in a blink of an eye. Crime is out of control, the border is out of control, the price of food and gas, and housing is out of control, and the only person who can clean this up is Donald Trump. Guys, I really, really love this country, and I’ve lived the American dream. I want my kids, your kids, and all those little teeny Hulk-a-maniacs out there to live the American dream, too. This November, guys, we can save the American dream for everyone, and Donald Trump is the president who will get the job done. All you criminals, all you lowlifes, all you scumbags, all you drug dealers, and all you crooked politicians need to answer one question, brother. Whatchya gonna do when Donald Trump and all the Trump-a-maniacs run wild on you, brother? God bless you, and thank you."

"Want me to body-slam Kamala Harris? Want me to drop the weight on Kamala? Is Kamala a chameleon? Is she Indian?"

"I don’t know if Brooke was fucking the black guy’s son. I mean, I don’t have double standards. I mean, I am a racist, to a point, fucking niggers. But then when it comes to nice people and shit, and whatever. I mean, I’d rather if she was going to fuck some nigger, I’d rather have her marry an 8-foot-tall nigger worth a hundred million dollars! Like a basketball player! I guess we’re all a little racist. Fucking nigger."

"If you knew my father, you would know how hard he fought... and the way it brought a smile to people light, medium and dark. We always fight a battle that people never see, and sometimes when you're hurting, you don't think logically. Human isn't perfect, and perfect is not he, but I can tell you one thing, it's just not what it seems. Cause If you knew the dad I knew, you'd know he raised me well. He taught me folks are so much more than shades could ever tell. And If you knew my father, you would know he's down to earth. He may have slammed the giant, but remembers life's true worth. If you knew my father, if you just walked in his shoes... then you would know that microscope that comes with yellow boots."

"They call, they call me the fat man 'Cause I weight two hundred pounds All the girls they love me 'Cause I know my way around."

"You made me cry, when you said goodbye Ain't that a shame My tears fell like rain Ain't that a shame You're the one to blame"

"Now there's no point in placing the blame And you should know I'd suffer the same"

"My two sons, Harry and Nathaniel, my father and my father-in-law and many of my friends idolized Roberto Clemente and so did I. I called him a double superstar."

"He was the only musician who ever lived, who can't be replaced by someone."

"[Crooning] started with Vallee, Rudy Vallée, didn't it? ... I was glad to be classified [as] anything, just to be working."

"[ Frank Sinatra was] another singer, and a good one."

"Cole Porter, he never missed, that fellow."

"I don't think I ever did pick a hit song, unless it was "Sweet Leilani". ... Some of the songs that [[w:Jack Kapp|Jack [Kapp] ]] picked didn't work, but 99% of them did."

"I just played Bing Crosby. ... Sometimes I had a priest's collar; sometimes I dressed some way else."

"Louis Armstrong ... was marvelous to be with. He had tremendous warmth, appeal. And I idolized him, not only for how great he was singing and playing, but for himself. ... I used to get postcards from him [from] all over the world. ... He went to every accessible place in the world."

"Doing something controversial was never my intention. This was just my sense of humor, and the kind of humor in my family. I never drew anything my mom wouldn’t have laughed at. Of course, my mom was insane. I’m kidding! Well, maybe a little."

"My own benchmark for success was pretty basic — I just wanted to be able to pay my rent. Beyond reaching that goal I really didn’t care much. I was doing something I loved, getting by, and that’s what mattered. So, in my own eyes, I think I became successful somewhere in my second year. But I’m not sure I ever quite shook the sense that the whole thing might be a house of cards. I always felt like yesterday’s cartoon was yesterday’s cartoon, and I was only as funny as today’s."

"Anybody who cares about art, anybody who cares about the vital importance of the individual in a society of people who want to turn anything that has color and joy and individuality into something that is gray, unimportant and uniform -- that is who this script is sent to."

"I find the science fiction community, in general, is a very positive group of people. Yes, sometimes they may be a little awkward or not mainstream, although I think over the last decade they’ve had to become more mainstream because of the Marvel films and things like that. But, in general, the sci fi community is very involved in the environment. They are very pro-space program. They want to reach beyond our own horizons. They’re never prejudiced against any race or religion or people like that. It’s a good group, generally speaking. But there’s always a percentage that take it a little too seriously, perhaps. They buy into Klingon reality a bit more so than it was intended by the creators. I’ve been doing the science fiction conventions and personal appearances since they were formulated, so I’m quite used to some oddities."

"I thought it was silly when people have that “my dog is better than your dog” mentality. I enjoyed Star Trek as a kid and I’m sure there were plenty of Trekkies who secretly liked Lost in Space."

"Goodbye to the brilliant June Lockhart … A one of a kind, talented, nurturing, adventurous, and non compromising Lady. She did it her way. … June will always be one of my very favorite moms … 100 years here. Wow! R.I.P. 👍🏼✌️❤️🙏🏻"

"The majority of people that get involved in film music are kind of like me, who had a dream and fell in love with it and then pursued it on the base of their mad love for it. My advice to the young aspiring composer is that film composing is about the long journey, about developing over a period of time, of hopefully creating a career that is constantly rising."

"The animation can go anywhere, and the music has to go with it. What is especially great from a composer's point of view is that the music in these shows gets featured, not buried; these shows appreciate the value of what the music is doing."

"I Think if I wanted to be famous, I would be working hard at doing that -- I am kind of working hard at not doing that."

"I've been told this is R&B, but it could be a few other things. It is certainly pretty neat, Warning: Very Sticky Hook!"

"All you have to do is give me Credit, which has led to my music being used in like, a million YouTube videos and over a thousand movies on IMDb..."

"I started making music because it was a problem that needed solving; it was very hard for filmmakers to get anything done without going through giant rigor morale, or at least it used to be."

"It is always easiest to write for the mood I'm in... and after a few hours, I am almost always IN the mood of the music. Because... that's what music does."

"I say! It is such a lovely brisk day! Aren't the horses lovely? I mean... look at all the horseness they have! They are scoring quite high on the horse-o-meters today! Nothing bovine on this street, Nay! ... ... ... Wait... I was trying to make a joke involving a horse's "neigh" combined with the archaic positive/negative usage of "nay". Then everything went wrong, and I said almost the opposite of the intention. So, without the joke: Picture a street where the only animals are the horsiest of horses... No cows or pigs. Okay, there are two dogs... but one of them is pretty small... and you can see a cat in one of the windows... but MOSTLY horses. If you added up the weights of all the non-horse, non-humans in the picture, they would weigh less than one horse."

"What is meditation for one may be cause for concern in another. - Some Elf"

"Picture a pixellated medieval village... cause that's what this is. It is the kind of music we think they played back in the day. It is not historically. But I'm okay with that, because we also didn't have lich-kings, lich-mages, lich-illithids, lich-warriors, or lich-archers. We did have lichens, though... I like lichens!"

"Welcome to the Holiday Inn, Airport. The presentation will begin shortly. SUCCESS starts with your ATTITUDE! If you are not EARNING, make sure you are LEARNING! AMBITION is the path to success. PERSISTENCE is the vehicle you arrive in. Success is doing the OPPOSITE of what everyone else is DOING! Actually... don't take this last one too literally. If everyone else is using the door, don't try walking through a wall (or whatever the opposite of a "door" is). I mean... there is a reason most people do the same things. Usually because they make sense. Oh, sure... it is okay to QUESTION what people are doing, but just doing the opposite... probably not great. The future of NETWORK MARKETING is UNLIMITED! Oh... Also a bit of hyperbole here. I mean, it literally cannot exceed the gross output of all the world's economies - and will likely top out far before that due to INEFFICIENCIES and REGULATION."

"This piece took almost exactly one year to go from initial idea to produced piece. What was I doing for a whole year!? I mean... it doesn't exactly sound that difficult."

"Is it a real Gregorian Chant? Nope. For one - there are no real words in it. Honestly, I don't want a religious exaltation mucking up my fantasy world. So if you're building a historically accurate "Monk Simulator: Year of Our Lord 882!", just move on. The other reason this isn't real is I never learned how to read that notation. There are insufficient sticks for the rhythms in the notation... I know, there is a real convention that you can learn. I just grabbed a few pieces of the sheet music from the 1200s, and guessed at how to do it. Sounds reasonable enough to me! (says the guy who knows virtually nothing about the art)"

"Background to an evil political action ad. Add your own alarmist voice over - this was engineered to make people uncomfortable, and not interfere with human voice range. "Tell your congressman to vote NO on the Pollute Our Drinking Water and Send All of Our Money to Canada Act.""

"Welcome to the tropical paradise of Port Horizon. Not much to do here but listen to the short wave radios and play guitar. There is also food and drinks with those little umbrellas... Other than that - not much. Except snorkeling. Snorkeling is pretty cool. Oh, there is also Art Night on Tuesday - where you get a volleyball and some paints and make yourself a friend! Beach chess... I forgot about Beach Chess. Don't play white against Todd, though - he plays all-Hedgehog all the time. Come on, Todd - just once, seriously ONCE could you play King's Indian or... you know what? I'd even take the French Defence; Exchange Variation, you boring symmetrical jerk."

"Oh! The horror! This is NOT a fun piece. It WILL make you feel like there is something seriously wrong. Did those veins on my forearm always look like that? I mean, they're doing a weird criss-cross pattern... and they look REALLY blue. I would have noticed that before, surely! I wonder if this has anything to do with the meteor that came down in Mr. Wilson's pond last night?"

"Part one of seven. Sort of an edgy-underwater feel... which isn't common. You can feel the struggle just trying to get the sounds out. Imagine a small rhinoceros at a tea party. The image you have in your head has nothing to do with this piece; But it is quite amusing."

"Part three of seven. Part pipe organ, part broken pipe organ, this isn't just spooky, it is crazy spooky. It also has a musical theme, which not all of this horror moody stuff has. Consider it the jelly filling in your horror doughnut."

"Part four of seven. This is the pizza cutter of this series, round and edgy. It has a little bit of melodic complexity, but mostly it just sits around being creepy."

"Part five of seven. Airy, but not in the "I'm outdoors, and everything is great 'airy'" way. More like the "the alien machine that sustains our life is slowly breaking down and poison is beginning to seep from its core" way. Whatever is happening... it isn't fast, and it isn't good."

"Part seven of seven. A real mind bender. This one is all acoustic, and no artificial synths, so it has an organic feel. Not Certified Organic, just normal organic. So, that means it looks better, requires less fertilizer, has fewer pests and a higher yield."

"Southern trap influenced rap pile of musical forklift platypus... okay, I don't know what these words mean. But if you understood them - we're all good. You know what you're getting, and... that's all I can hope for really. Truth in advertising!"

"Could be the thinking music for a quiz show about the paranormal? "Where does the Sasquatch typically vacation... is it A, The High Mountains... B, Unexplored Cave Systems... C, Graceland... or D, In another dimension - similar to, but not strongly coupled with our own reality. Take your time and answer whenever you're ready.... A, B, C, or D... Would you like to consult the Tarot or do an entrail reading?" I love the flute bits in this piece."

"You know when you watch a vampire movie and then you walk out into the real world, but you're still sort of in the fictional world because it looked like the real world... and that's where you are now. I call this Persistence of Fiction, and it feels awesome! Capture some fiction by playing this track while walking to the bus... er the Vampire Bus! or waiting in line at the Vampire DMV or sorting Vampire Direct Mail Ads or doing some Vampire Macrame."

"You know what's cool? A standpipe in the winter. I imagine this one with a hip mustache and a plaid beret. Enough of the imagery, this is a little downtempo chill piece with lush horn punctuation. Suitable for: walks in the rain, time-lapse videos, sad cooking shows."

"This piece was built almost entirely with arpeggiators. What does that mean for you? Probably nothing. But holy man! Does this sound like it is from 1983! So, pop a tape of "Flashdance" in your VCR... and then spend like 8 minutes rewinding it... because, apparently your cousin couldn't be bothered to do that. Seriously, Sally! You did the same thing when I lent you "Smokey and the Bandit II", and I didn't say anything because you had a hard week, but still managed to make the Jell-o Salad with the grapes for the family reunion... which was nice. Anyway, I'll probably just get you one of those $20 tape rewinders they have at Radio Shack for your birthday. I also enrolled you in the Battery of the Month Club. You're welcome."

"Yeah Boyzzz! BGM Music in the HOUSE!!!! In this case, "BGM Music" means "Background Music... Music". You want royalty-free!? You got it! You want ukulele mastery!? You got that, too! You want a piece that's a GNDN piece!? DONE! It's like a whole new genre of undistinguished music! It is sort of bouncy, and cheery. So... somewhat distinguished. It is really hard to hype this piece, but it is wicked-useful!"

"Stop it! Stop complaining, it is supposed to end like that! This is a loopable piece. Why? You never know how long your voice-overed tour of the cardboard factory is going to take... Or your real estate tour... Or your appendectomy video... Or your video of that one train by your house."

"So this one sounds like what is [sic] sounds like."

"Have you ever heard a 4 bassoon ensemble before? Not likely. While bassoonists may create temporary pair-bonds, they are never found in groups of 3 or more. Much digital trickery was involved in this piece to make them appear as though they were all in the same room at the same time. Tuba players, on the other hand exhibit extreme flocking behaviour, and have even been spotted in mass migrations."

"Co-written with Bryan Teoh while he was on vacation (Thanks Bryan!) this is all the mystery and chill groove you need. So come on you cats and swingers, enjoy yourself a Jet Pilot (served in a pineapple of course) and help unravel the Secret of Tiki Island! Can you save yourself and the island from the Volcano!? No. Of course you can't. It is a freaking VOLCANO. If the pyroclastic flows and lahars don't kill you, the carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide probably will."

"I gotta admit, I've never been to a clambake, only ever fish boils... which are similar, except for clambakes usually involve mollusks and giant sea-bugs, and fish boils involve fish. Also, clambakes are more steaming and fish boils are more boiling. You're more likely to see Green Bay Packers jerseys at fish boils, and more likely to see New England Patriots jerseys at clambakes. This music is west-coast, though... The more I think about it - the less useful this descriptive paragraph becomes."

"What is love? Apparently, it is an odd mix of 1980's synthy love songs and modern trap beats. I don't think there is anything like this out there... which may be a fine thing - or I've just invented a genre. Crooner-Synth Trap-Pop."

"Welcome to the lobby of the FUTURE! Luxurious automatic ashtrays, and modern green vinyl furnishings set off the shag carpeted walls. Enjoy a Rusty Nail from our cheerful bar staff (with a complimentary cheese and fruit plate before 5pm). We feature prime rib dinners every day that ends in a "y"! Remember to tip the bellhops at least 5 cents per bag. Enjoy your stay! This was written 2 years before it was published, because I didn't have a good enough upright bass sample to make it go."

"Part alien cacophony, part organic awfulness, part six of seven. If you set this piece as music you wake up to in the morning, you're going to have a bad, bad day. There will be half remembered monsters from the times of not-asleep, not-awake... whose only jobs are to induce unexpected nausea inside government buildings."

"After some amount of introspection, I can only conclude that this is the afterlife, or some entryway to the afterlife... or a really cool club in the Meatpacking district after-hours."

"Ten years is a long time to be a part of anything and to have a group of people in your life for any reason, let alone one that really was a part of my most formative years."

"He goes around and he ends up unloading, what, sixty rounds, kills two people, wounds a third person."

"My rest as a Black woman in America suffering from generational exhaustion and racial trauma always was a political refusal and social justice uprising within my body."

"This is about more than naps. It is not about fluffy pillows, expensive sheets, silk sleep masks or any other external, frivolous, consumerist gimmick. It is about a deep unraveling from white supremacy and capitalism. These two systems are violent and evil. History tells us this and our present living shows this. Rest pushes back back and disrupts a system that views human bodies as a tool for production and labor. It is a counter narrative. We know that we are not machines. We are divine."

"There’s a stigma around caring for yourself. Unless it’s attached to capitalism, then it’s okay. You can pay $200 for a facial, and then you’re taking care of yourself. But if you’re caring for yourself with something as deep as sleep, which is one of our most ancient and primal needs, if you’re doing that in public, caring for your body, that’s shameful. I tie that back to capitalism and to white supremacy and these notions around not seeing humans as divine and not seeing our bodies as belonging to us."

"I employ a vocabulary from art and design to describe melody and rhythm..."

"Representing a place through sound is my response to our image-saturated media."

"I think sound is still undervalued as a means to measure environmental health, regional identity, and personal narrative."

"[Regarding field recordings] I try not to edit or assign value to what I find...What I'm trying to do is get enough material so the artist and musician in me can develop some sort of beautiful response using those sounds."

"If we think about places sonically, I’d say the Midwest [of America] is more of a whisper than a shout... I suppose I need to hold the microphone a little closer, sit a little more quietly, and be a little more patient. This place—topographically, culturally, spiritually—does not just jump out at you; it takes time to reveal its wonder. It requires a lot of listening."

"The best art provides someone with something that they didn't know they needed, that touches them in a way they may not be able to verbalize."

"The [musical] thinking leans heavily on vocabulary and thoughts that one develops in design and architecture school...I think about space and structure and skin and texture. I think about color and movement, and all of these things that have no direct relation to quarter notes and half-notes and rests."

"I also want to encourage others to work in this field [of recording sounds] without having to spend a lot of money on gear. Putting a sock on your smartphone and laying it next to a bird’s nest can yield some pretty incredible recordings!"

"As I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I take a look at my life and realize there's not much left 'Cause I've been blastin' and laughin' so long, that Even my mama thinks that my mind is gone But I ain't never crossed a man that didn't deserve it Me be treated like a punk, you know that's unheard of You better watch how you're talkin', and where you're walkin' Or you and your homies might be lined in chalk."

"Been spendin' most their lives, livin' in the gangsta's paradise Been spendin' most their lives, livin' in the gangsta's paradise Keep spendin' most our lives, livin' in the gangsta's paradise Keep spendin' most our lives, livin' in the gangsta's paradise."

"Tell me why are we, so blind to see That the ones we hurt, are you and me? Tell me why are we, so blind to see That the ones we hurt, are you and me?"

"Power and the money, money and the power Minute after minute, hour after hour Everybody's runnin', but half of them ain't lookin' It's goin' on in the kitchen, but I don't know what's cookin'"

"They say I gotta learn, but nobody's here to teach me If they can't understand it, how can they reach me I guess they can't, I guess they won't I guess they front, that's why I know my life is out of luck, fool."

"Eliza R. Snow arose and said that she felt to concur with the President, with regard to the word Benevolent, that many Societies with which it had been associated, were corrupt,—that the popular Institutions of the day should not be our guide—that as daughters of Zion, we should set an example for all the world, rather than confine ourselves to the course which had been heretofore pursued."

"E. R. Snow offer'd an amendment by way of transposition of words, instead of The Nauvoo Female Relief Society, it shall be call'd the Female Relief Society of Nauvoo—Seconded by Prest. J. Smith and carried."

"In the heav’ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare; Truth is reason—truth eternal Tells me I’ve a mother there. When I leave this frail existence— When I lay this mortal by, Father, mother, may I meet you In your royal court on high?"

"My sisters, let us cultivate ourselves, that we may be capable of doing much good. We are daughters of our Heavenly Father, and our position as Saints of the Most High is at the head of the world."

"Women had much more to do in moulding Society than men had We want to be living monuments of the character of our Heavenly Father and Mother and if we lived up to the priveliges we had we would all meet in their presence and have a good time together, if we could only get through without a spot on our Garments without speaking against the Priesthood or the principles of the Gospel Then what a Glorious thing it would be, how pure how holy and how enobled we would feel be if we could live thus."

"Woman must save her self. I would not risk my salvation to any man or being I must stand before my God and be judged If I act as a priestest [priestess] unto my God I must earn my position[.]"

"I want you to instruct the sisters."

"Either do the fucking thing and shut the fuck up, or fucking just shut the fuck up."

"I heard that you don't do favors for the mob but do you treat the devil the same?"

"They kick you when you're down but they wanna kick it when you up."

"You do know it cost money to put a t-shirt on your back? You do know it cost money have a house, a home? You do know it cost money to eat? Get money, don’t let these people fool you."

"The key is to make it."

"I eat pears now, and shit like that. Shoutout to all the pear."

"Don't ever burn a bridge. Let me ask you a question: can you walk on water? Don't burn no bridge. Only God can walk on water."

"A lot of people see the glory, and don't know the story."

"It breaks my heart They ain't believe in us We the best music They played themselves While you hatin' and being jealous You could be over here embracin' that love More love, more blessings, more life GOD DID You either win with us, or you watch us win."

"Civil-Civility depicts the acts and writings of courageous women who I felt defied all odds to help women and humanity."

"The culture of suppressing women composers and performers goes centuries back in Germany and other countries."

"There is something freeing in seeing yourself in a new context. People have no preconceived notion of who you are, and there is relief in knowing that you can re-create yourself. When you’re entrenched in a community of people who know you, it’s scary to proclaim wanting to be different and wanting to experiment. We went to the other side of the world to make our own sound. Usually this is a methodology you employ as a restart later in your career. We did it right up front. We traveled to a foreign country for our first record. We had to uproot ourselves, not because we were deep into career ruts, or didn’t want to give credit to the places we had come from, but because we had no desire to sound like or emulate anything that had come before.It was an extreme way to start, but I learned later on how hard it can become to unsettle yourself, to trip yourself up, and I think that’s a good place to write from. It’s important to undermine yourself and create a level of difficulty so the work doesn’t come too easily. The more comfortable you get, the more money you earn, the more successful you are, the harder it is to create situations where you have to prove yourself and make yourself not just want it, but need it. The stakes should always feel high."

"[I]s Trump a philo-Semite or an anti-Semite? The answer is both. The principle that explains his seemingly contradictory outlook toward Jews is simple: Trump believes all the anti-Semitic stereotypes about Jews. But he sees those traits as admirable. To Trump, the belief that Jews are foreign interlopers who use their wealth to serve their own clannish interests is not a negative — as it is for traditional anti-Semites — but rather a positive. He wants Jews to be his attorneys and manage his money, so that he, too, can be rich. He wants them in his political corner, so that he, too, can be powerful. He wants to buy politicians, just like he thinks they do. As a man who has always stood solely for his own naked self-interest, Trump does not see the anti-Semitic conception of the self-interested Jew as a complaint, but rather a compliment. He prioritizes his needs ahead of the national interest, and so he sees the idea that Jews might do the same with themselves or with Israel as entirely natural."

"In July 2016, Trump tweeted a meme declaring that Hillary Clinton was "the most corrupt candidate ever"—with those words emblazoned over a six-pointed Jewish star superimposed on a pile of money. The meme had previously been popularized on a neo-Nazi website. Shortly before the election, Donald Trump Jr. retweeted Kevin MacDonald, America’s premier white-supremacist academic, who has argued that Jews are genetically driven to destroy Western countries, pumping the marginal malcontent into the political mainstream."

"Out of 8 billion people on the planet, there are only 16 million Jews—but far, far more anti-Semites."

"The accordion fun? ....Sometimes. Not all the time. I find that it can be a frustrating instrument. The coordination involved is extraordinary and sometimes that coordination doesn't happen.... The use of the left hand and at the same time getting the dynamic range, the volume, is quite difficult. Other times it is fun if you're working with other musicians and you're doin' pieces that you really enjoy. It can really be fun!"

"The difficulties, of course, if you take an orchestral work you want to try to get as much of that composition, harmonically, and contrapuntally, that you possibly can. Many times that's impossible. It depends upon the texture of the music. And there are certain solo things that simply do not lend themselves to the accordion, such as Chopin. The ballads would be next to impossible to really do successfully...The accordion is allied to organ-texture, for instance, a Bach Prelude."

"The buttons on the standard instrument are a combination of single bass notes and sets of chords - major, minor, dominant seventh, and diminished...Yes (in all keys). And you can form other chords using more than one button; you don't have to just stay with one button. So you can play the root of the chord, with a single bass note, and then the chord coupled with that. So you get a considerable amount of sonority that way."

"There are instruments known as free-bass instruments, or sometimes called the bassetti, where you have totally complete single pitches, simply like you would in the right hand, and you form your own chords. And you have a greater range in the left hand, some three to four-and-a-half octaves."

"Since the accordion has so many attributes that are conducive to chamber music, it is particularly suitable for this medium of expression. In essence, the accordion has all of the prerequisites essential to small ensemble involvement: sustaining power, dynamic sensitivity, articulated response, timbre, and texture variance, and compatibility of sound with string and wind instruments."

"(Incantation) Marduk caught some flak for some work they’ve done that references the Nazis in the context of WWII. In that same breath, you’ve recently caught fire over your association with your former singer Craig Pillard and his Nazi-related project Der Sturmer. What are your thoughts on that?(McEntee) [laughs] Well, first of all it’s kind of ridiculous because he is our former singer. I can’t have control over what any of my former members do or what they’re into. That was probably about 2 years after he left the band when he got into some of his controversial stuff. I mean it’s so just ridiculous because this Nazi stuff never even slightly came up when we were in a band. So it’s just totally insane. For many years, I barely even talked to Craig so to have any affiliation with whatever he’s doing, regardless of what it is… Yeah, we have a connection because he played in Incantation and he did an amazing job while he was in the band, but that’s really as far as our relationship goes.The thing with that… I think that it’s really ignorant because they’re not really getting proper information and trying to go for low hanging fruit. If they really wanted to do the right thing in pushing their agenda I think they need to find the right way to do it where they’re not going to get too much push back. The way they’re doing it is almost fueling more problems. If they really feel that us and Marduk are racist, they should know for sure before making those accusations. But to try to say that the people coming to a show are being Nazi sympathizers is just absolutely insane. I mean especially in Austin [where protestors showed up]– 80% of the crowd is probably Mexican or Latino. And the way they’re dealing with things is actually causing more push back in the opposite direction than they would if they didn’t do anything at all. Now there’s people that are just pissed off at them. They’re gonna do antagonizing stuff to them– I have seen Mexican people giving them the “Hail Hitler” sign at the show and they were doing it to piss them off, not because they’re racist.They’re going about it is just wrong. I mean especially stopping shows– you’re not gonna make more fans by stopping shows. They stopped the show in Oakland, California– I think they made some threats and the show didn’t go on. All that did was really piss off a lot of people, and it totally doesn’t help anything. Drunken metal heads want to go to a show and have a good time, you know?The thing that really drives me up a wall is that we are metalheads­– we’re supposed to be rebellious and on the edge­– we’re supposed to be kind of assholes to some extent. That’s the only reason why I got into metal. I don’t feel like I need to prove to people anything really. I shouldn’t have to. We play all around the world to different people of all different nationalities and the thing that we have in common is that we all like metal. We’re really appreciative of that. I would say the same for Marduk. They play all around the world for people, and if they were really racist they’d only be playing in Europe and certain places where there’s white people. So it’s just absurd.That’s what kills me. We need to work together to build our scene, not work apart. And the thing is that people go to our shows… we don’t have a litmus test. They could be Nazis or they could be ANTIFA or whatever­– just go and enjoy the show. The show is our getaway from everything. It’s not a test to be one thing or the other– it has no relevance to our show whatsoever [laughs]. We don’t do anything that’s political in anyway. We have no interest in it. If you’re religious you’ll get a little offended but I mean everyone is allowed at our shows. Whatever they believe is none of our business."

"There was a time people blamed me for ruining all these bass players. So I try to pound it into [new players]: drummer, drummer, drummer. Watch the drummer, stay with the drummer, keep your time together. I’m trying to undo the damage I may have done. When you’re a kid and there’s a cake in front of you, you want the frosting right away. I try to undo that as best as possible by just emphasizing, for newer or younger players, that [the cake itself] is so vitally important."

"In the Big Rock Candy Mountains There's a land that's fair and bright Where the handouts grow on bushes And you sleep out every night Where the boxcars all are empty And the sun shines every day On the birds and the bees and the cigarette trees The lemonade springs where the bluebird sings In the Big Rock Candy Mountains."

"In the Big Rock Candy Mountains All the cops have wooden legs And the bulldogs all have rubber teeth And the hens lay soft-boiled eggs."

"I'm a-goin' to stay where you sleep all day Where they hung the Turk that invented work In the Big Rock Candy Mountains."

"Art Farmer’s approach to jazz seemed simplicity itself. ‘What I try to do with a song,’ the trumpeter once said, ‘is to get as much enjoyment out of playing it as I can.’ Yet his style expressed a quiet profundity and originality that defied the obvious. Although, born in 1928, he was a member of the bebop generation, he eschewed obvious pyrotechnics. A Farmer solo didn’t merely ‘run the changes’, ripping through the chords, but created an absorbing, probing shape, at once subtle and lyrical. In terms of facility, he could do anything he wanted, and his technical command and thoughtful musicianship ensured first-call status in the booming jazz scene of the 1950s. After apprenticeship with Lionel Hampton and other big bands, Farmer starred with two of the most prominent small groups of the time – Horace Silver’s hard-driving quintet, and the cool quartet of Gerry Mulligan. At the same time, he was leading his own groups in a series of widely praised albums. One of the best is the eponymous Art, with a quartet including the trumpeter’s kindred spirit, pianist Tommy Flanagan. Effortlessly compelling, it’s a classic example of Farmer’s special gift for reinventing standard tunes. ‘Younger than Springtime’ becomes a kind of idyll, his tone both round and clear. ‘Who Cares’ shows his fiery side, full of unexpected angles, and ‘I’m a Fool to Want You’ is a reflective ballad, but not morose."

"When Freddie Hubbard died at the end of 2008, it was sobering to think that the younger generation of jazz fans might not be sure who he was. Aged 70, the trumpeter had been largely inactive for almost two decades, his career plagued by lip trouble and a lack of direction. It was a far cry from his 1960s status as a new trumpet king, synonymous with cutting-edge excitement, a key player in most classic sessions of those heady days."

"In the autumn of 1945, the hottest thing in New York was an ancient black trumpet player who, just three years before, had lacked both an instrument and teeth. What Willie ‘Bunk’ Johnson did possess, however, was historic, even mythic charisma. He’d been present in New Orleans at the very dawn of jazz, and played with Buddy Bolden, the fabled cornettist who’d virtually invented the music. And now here he was, freshly equipped with dentures and horn, a living icon pouring out authentic blues and rags with a company of similarly venerable New Orleanians. Audiences weary of the noisy regimentation of swing and the edgy complexity of bop were entranced by the throbbing warmth of ‘real jazz’, as if they’d been transported to the halcyon days of Basin Street. Unfortunately, Bunk’s moment in the sun was short-lived. Though a wily, urbane character, adept at charming his patrons and the media, he was also wilful and fond of a drink. Rather contemptuous of the band that had been assembled for him, he couldn’t be relied on to perform at his best or even turn up. Within a year, critics lamented that ‘the name Bunk Johnson (had) lost its magic and its meaning’, and he returned to Louisiana, where he died in 1949. All the same, his brief acclaim made Johnson the figurehead for a worldwide boom in the popularity of traditional jazz which continued after his death: Johnson sidemen such as clarinettist George Lewis forged international careers, and made New Orleans a tourist mecca. But Johnson remains controversial, revered by many as a unique musician, dismissed by others as a has-been who was second-rate in his prime. And yet the Johnson records still cast their spell – the singular vitality of New Orleans, pulsating and human, with a communal rhythm that’s more important than individual virtuosity."

"Critics like to describe certain records as ‘seminal’ and, in several ways, Lee Morgan’s The Sidewinder actually was. It marked a return to form for the erstwhile trumpet prodigy, whose career had gone adrift due to drugs. In 1963, still only 25, he was already a veteran of the Dizzy Gillespie band – which he had joined at 18 – and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. The epitome of the bravura energy and bluesy drive of hard bop, Morgan was renowned for his cocky assurance, flashing technique and love of playing. He attacked solos with a boyish zest, as if he couldn’t wait to tell you everything he was feeling and show you what he could do. His blend of funk, fire and fun – plus a knack for adventurous phrasing – gave an exuberant edge to all five tracks on The Sidewinder. But the surprise was its title tune, a sinuous blues line with an infectious, hip-swinging beat which caught the ear of the public. Morgan and his record company, Blue Note, had a huge Top 40 hit on their hands, with consequences they could not have predicted. Having tasted commercial success, the trumpeter, though passionate about his art, felt his subsequent albums needed a groovy, R‘n’B-style hook. And Blue Note, a small label proud of its independence, found it couldn’t meet the demand for The Sidewinder. So it joined forces with a larger firm, and gradually moved away from its pure-jazz ethos into the twilight zone of fusion and crossover. But, as the 1960s wore on, that was clearly where jazz was headed. The Sidewinder inspired countless dumbed-down imitations, without the original’s subtle flair. Ironically, Lee Morgan fiercely opposed the trend he was thought to have started, insisting on the vital depth of jazz, which he pursued in his own playing. But his career and life were savagely ended when he was shot at a club by a jealous woman in 1972. It’s a sad and curious tale, but what remains is Lee Morgan’s achievement, not least in The Sidewinder itself. Freed from its cultural context, it retains all its ebullience, energy and charm and its famous title tune is an abiding delight. The disc’s real distinction, like that of Lee Morgan himself, is a timeless creativity."

"I have observed that, in jazz, all roads lead back to Louis Armstrong. But Louis’s road began with the man he honoured as his inspiration, idol and mentor, Joe ‘King’ Oliver. During World War I, Oliver was the cornet king of New Orleans, and in 1919 he went north to Chicago, where he won similar renown with his Creole Jazz Band, dazzling dancers, listeners and musicians with the sound of Crescent City jazz. Oliver had been a father figure to young Armstrong, and in 1922 he invited his protégé to join his group in Chicago. Armstrong’s brilliance was already evident, and his arrival transformed the Oliver band from a classic ensemble to a legend. It’s our supreme good fortune that the next year the group put much of its repertoire on disc – 37 sides which constitute the first unequivocal demonstration of the expresssive potency of jazz, in all its variety and fire. While it’s easy to marvel at the immensity of Armstrong’s burgeoning talent, the overwhelming effect of these records is the power of the Creole Jazz Band as a whole. With King Oliver firmly at the helm, the group achieves a level of focused energy and invention that is simply irresistible. In accord with New Orleans practice, theirs is largely an ensemble music – solos tend to be short, adding colour to the overall texture. But the definition of the individual voices is a constant delight, as is the unflagging, pulsating swing."

"An integral part of Ornette Coleman's early groups, Charlie Haden played an important role in the development of free jazz, while also being an extremely competent and intuitive player. While his playing and writing with the large ensemble Liberation Music Orchestra, as well as his output with Keith Jarrett's group is stellar, his duo recordings are great, as well, namely Beyond the Missouri Sky with guitarist Pat Metheny and Nightfall with pianist John Taylor."

"Just 25 when he died in a car accident in 1961, Scott LaFaro showed an early proficiency on the bass after taking it up at the age of 18, just before starting at Ithaca College. A weeks into his sophomore year, LaFaro hit the road with Buddy Morrow, but left the band in Los Angeles, and then went on to play with Chet Baker, Stan Kenton, Cal Tjader and Ornette Coleman. LaFaro is probably best known for his work with the Bill Evans Trio over the last few years of the bassist's life. His playing on Evans's Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Waltz for Debby is just remarkable."

"Ron Carter has played on over 2,500 albums and secured a spot in jazz history as one of the world's finest bassists. Doing much more than merely helping anchor the rhythm, Carter is a melodic master. In his five-decade-long career, he's played with countless jazz legends, including a five-year stint in Miles Davis's quintet, an outfit that also included Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter and Tony Williams. While his playing on most of the recordings he did with Davis are stellar, some of his albums as a leader, like Uptown Conversation, are excellent, as are his duo albums with guitarist Jim Hall, platters like Live at the Village West and Alone Together."

"While Lester Young might have had a warm tone, Stan Getz's was even more relaxed and wispy, especially on the jazz-bossa nova albums he did with Brazilian pianist Antonio Carlos Jobim and singer and guitarist Joao Gilberto, including the 1963 album Getz/Gilberto, which included "The Girl From Ipanema." Sure, Getz's tone was perfectly suited for bossa nova, but the tenor player could also work his around bop tunes. His playing is especially gorgeous and fluid on Focus, which included string arrangements by arranger Eddie Sauter."

"With his instantly recognizable biting and clear tone, tenor player Sonny Rollins, who turns 83 in September, is regarded by some as the greatest living saxophonist today. Inspired by Lester Young and Coleman Hawkins, Rollins had an ability to rarely repeat himself when improvising, even during lengthy solos. He was just in his mid-twenties when Saxophone Colossus was released, and the title of the disc was more than fitting. Rollins was already a titan of the tenor evidenced by cuts like "St. Thomas," one of his most well known compositions."

"Wayne Shorter, who turns eighty this month, and Sonny Rollins are two of the finest saxophonists living today."

"Hey you, sit down and listen! Don't be flippant and don't be dismissin'. Think you're a Flash encyclopedia? Eating, breathing Macromedia? Think you're cool sayin' "All Your Base"? Get that Xiao Xiao outta my face! You gotta be kidding me with that crap, Animutation's where it's at."

"Suddenly, there's a ring in my cell phone; I pick it up: It's the Angel of Death, and he says "Wazzup?" I say, "What is it this time?" And he's like, "Well, hello, goodbye, I'll see you in Hell." He can be like that sometimes, he's such a nut. So I snicker and say, "I'd love to, but Gravity's calling, I've got some falling to do""

"Prance omelette stalking chimneysweep Eleven hatred earmuff okay rathskeller My elusive hula yellow sketching creamy helium gentlemanly communique."

"This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny. Good guys, bad guys and explosions, as far as the eye can see And only one will survive, I wonder who it will be. This is the ultimate showdown of ultimate destiny"

"But something keeps me as a pet: the only house that's not on fire yet. I made it when I was an architect. This is just a side effect."

"It's not the nothingness at the end, so much as the message nothingness would send."

"Lost in solipsism, he then slowly pulls a lever which sets off a mechanism which does nothing whatsoever, but the nothing that it does negates the everything we know because it's screaming just because, because it's neither friend or foe, and so we label it a menace or a grandiose work of art. From its finale to its genesis, we slowly pull it all apart."

"Two trucks having sex, two trucks having sex. My muscles, my muscles, involuntarily flex."

"Due to my strong personal convictions, I wish to stress that this record in no way endorses a belief in the occult."

"A marker on a grave, marker on a grave Marker on a grave and I know I'm the one who died And underneath the name, underneath the name Underneath my name it says, "He Earned His Life""

"You can't remember where you came from (In a spiral of ants) You can't remember where you're going (In a spiral of ants) You can't remember knowing You are one ant Over, it's over The pheromones, the self-avoiding odyssey Consuming the colony The Circle rules your life"

"Any outlaw tryin' to draw with a pen and a pad Can draw Jim West with a pen and a pad Don't even think about a pen and a pad weighin' a ton Just tryin' to draw just for fun."

"I don't think it really hits you until it's out in the world and you see how much it means to people"

"It's not self-congratulatory, it's not announcing itself, it's just accepting it as a normal reflection of our reality"

"It's bigger than I am"

"Wait. She just locked herself in a room, took some Vyvanse, and made an album?’ That’s me any day of the week"

"It just felt so democratic in a way that was really exciting to me. It felt like something I could always be low-stakes doing in the background, and whether I did something with it or not, I enjoyed doing it, so it didn’t really matter"

"I was like, Alright, so I’m doing comedy at night, and during the day, I’ll make beats and stuff"

"[Charles Manson is] the perfect embodiment of Odinism as a way of life, a Hitlerian ideal! I find it difficult to breathe within the confines of more mainstream National Socialism which seems to be made up of people who lack any inner vision & are still thinking in terms as small as those who they oppose."

"We mourn not its victims, we honor its victors... I would remind those here that murder is the predator's prerogative, and there is no birth without blood."

"Every single one of us in this room, we'd be prepared to kill if need be, we would be prepared to die for what we believe in. But what scares the people out there a thousand times more is that we’re prepared to live for what we believe in."

"When all is said and done, I have no great quarrel with being labelled a "fascist". While it is not the whole story, it implies (to me) a sort of Marquis De Sade worldview that sees life in terms of master and slave, strong and weak, predator and prey. I know such views are highly unfashionable, but to me they seem fairly consistent with what I've seen to be true."

"We don’t believe in a master race... We think there are strong people who do what they want to do, and there are other people who just follow along. Race is an issue, but I don’t think you can have a master race, because every race has a handful of people who are really intelligent, who are achievers, and a bunch of people who are what Lenin called "stuffing in the mattress"."

"The coasts are doomed, they're death traps. The cities are like malignant cancers, completely dysfunctional. They're llike previews of the Apocalypse. You know how deadly diseases have symptoms - ugly sores that sprout up that sort of signify a deeper problem. That's how I view cities. If America has the cultural equivalent of A.I.D.S., the major cities are analogous to Kaposis Sarcoma. If you want to see life in dysfunction, go to S.F. or L.A. or N.Y."

"A Satanic world is a world reborn in purity, a world where the instinct and the intellect will be complementary to one another rather than being at odds with one another. It will be a world in which we follow laws of nature instead of just the rules that man has made up to regulate his conduct. It will be a world in which masters will be masters and slaves will be slaves, and never the twain shall meet."

"I feel that I'm a fascist, but 'Nazi' is a real specific term... I'm a fascist in the sense of the modern bastardized meaning of the word. I'm completely against democratic values and liberalism. I think that they have very little to do with life on Earth. I think they're an ideological abstraction."

"Social Darwinism is simply the idea that the Darwinian concept of "survival of the fittest" applies to man. It's the idea that within a culture, superior individuals will rise to the top, and inferior individuals will sink to the bottom, as a part of natural selection. It isn't related to fascism, Nazism, or racism—it's just the way of the world."

"I think AIDS is probably the best thing that's happened to Africa. I mean, just imagine; this is a place with so much population that the land can’t support it, and they can’t feed themselves, and they're starving to death—to me it seems that something like AIDS would be a godsend... think it would be great if that place were just turned into a big animal preserve—what about the animals? Fuck the human beings! Let them all slaughter each other with machetes, let them die of AIDS, let that entire continent turn back into a wild kingdom again."

"Since I've pretty much abandoned the idea of sound manipulation as a way of making music, and am just concentrating on trying to write good songs on acoustic guitar, the first thing that has to be there is a song that has a power or reality on its own, completely naked, just the guitar and voice. It has to be good enough to be performed live like that to be convincing in itself."

"Dylan is like a friend I've returned to throughout my life. Jim Morrison, too. Of course, he's pretty corny on the page, but it works with the music. I used to listen to the Doors over and over, in various mental states."

"Initially, advertising slogans influenced me the most. I really liked the way that language was aggressive and immediate, but with lots of subtext. It's reaching for the back of your mind to influence you."

"Willie Nelson has an ability that is particular to country music – these one-liners that set up a whole song, then everything else is built around that. I guess you could call them zingers. Crazy is the perfect song. It's an incredibly complex emotion: it's concise, but it describes a state of mind so clearly and poignantly. He's a true American poet."

"Hidden by distance, the darkness behind the stars reached an impenetrable black density. Light, thought, and possibility were sucked helplessly into the inhaling mouth of the dead hole. Inside the hole was the center of the heart of the opposite of space. The future and the past were nullified, backwards and forwards. History rewound, snubbed out before it began. Silence was exterminated. The earth floated in a sea of black blood, glowing like an ember cupped in the hands of an invisible god. His corrupt breath spread clouds of poison gas, cloaking the continents in a sweet tasting atmosphere. Agitated hoards of reptilian predator birds migrated through the hemispheres in a stone-eyed search for prey, casting shadows on the red dirt like cryptic signals flashed down from the veiled deities that lived behind the sky. Beneath the ground, liquid fire rolled in waves of buried hatred. A mindless howl echoed through the lightless subterranean canyons in a single sustained note of ignorant and savage pain."

"There's a point when you wake up from a drunk, in perfect clarity. The synapses in your brain feel greased, and the distinction between your subconscious and conscious mind evaporates. A point where everything is hyper-vivid, your intelligence humming at maximum capacity, like a meditating Buddhist acolyte overwhelmed with sudden white-light attainment. And at that instant, you see everything charged with energy - the past, present and future spread out in front of you, blissful and meaningless and simultaneous, every microscopic detail in every object drifting through your eyes, along with panoplies of stars and universes, pulled together through the woven fabric of your flesh, so that while disintegrating, you're invisible, while seeing everything, you see nothing."

"In order to come out the winner, in my mind, I memorized their faces, down to the smallest detail, the smallest nuance of expression — the black curling hair growing out of his cheek that he'd missed shaving, the pale pink blemish above her right eyebrow showing through the film of cream-colored makeup, applied with skillful thickness so that it blended out smoothly into her forehead. When I closed the door, I held them in my mind, exposing their image permanently onto a blank sheet in a secret file where I kept my memories for future use. I'd use this and other memories of them to serve me, to make them please me. They were flimsy in there, among the images I preserved, foolish really, not threatening at all. Two people who crushed each other's bodies every othernight beneath their mutual flab, muttering gratuitous, lustful phrases into each other's waxy ears until they'd come. Then they'd roll over, farting a sleep-inducing lullaby."

"My hands are soft and cool. When I touch the smooth enamel walls of my stall, I feel the warmth of the women pass through the wall and into me. I absorb everything around me. I can taste the bitter luminous gas trapped in the fluorescent tube above my head. I can decipher the single note hum of the light beneath the depth-charge rhythm of the disco. The beat of the music pummels my body and spreads me outwards against the walls of the stall. I'm no longer contained in myself. I'm joined to the walls, part of a living cell. The stall is an organism. The circle of stalls is a circle of malignant cells surrounding a cancer. The women are rotting, sucking each other and transferring their corrosive juices back and forth, sharing their disease. I can smell them, ammoniac and fetid, through the wall."

"Responding quickly, multiple hands press into the arena from the surrounding walls. Disembodied feelers, they form the interior nerves of an underwater creature groping for nourishment and stimulus. The fingers gesture, twitch and writhe, trying to attract the attention of the dancers. From the inside, the women see flickering mirrors reflecting the colored lights, and beneath the mirrors they see gummy prehensile pods, swaying frantically in the quickened current."

"We're unified, from stall to stall, man to woman, hand to body, liquid to solid, animate to inanimate. It doesn't matter if it's my hands inside her or someone else's as she rolls and glides from feeler to feeler. We're one creature, pulsing with bliss, sight, sound. Our orgasm never ends."

"The fear of being captured by the killers - hung up on hooks forced through the skin at the base of our necks, burned slowly alive above a low fire, our flesh pulled away in slabs from our bodies then eaten before our eyes - moves our legs forward, keeps our eyes half-open. Inevitably we'll drift into the jungle where we'll be eaten by the beast. He'll drag us to his secret pit and play with us until he's bored, then devour us. The thought of its tusks buried in our guts is less terrifying than the knives and fire of the human killers, so we fall into the brush, defeated, waiting to be taken. As we fall into sleep, we hear him breathing at our necks, hot and moist, prodding our bodies with his snout. He talks to us in a human voice, like the innocent voice of a little girl, soothing us, reassuring us, laughing softly to himself beneath his words."

"Resting like a child in the arms of these twisted vines, where the ropes of hair mixed with the fringe of her jacket, her breasts rose naked like a sacrifice offered up to the light, like two huge peeled eggs, plump and melting in the weak warmth of the sun, threaded with a faint map of blue veins. She turned to me and smiled. Her mouth was a wreck of browned and blackened claws, but her tongue was pale pink beneath them, gleaming like the last surviving innocent animal in a universe of scum. Steam rose from her insides, drifting up into the trees."

"Fanged branches clutched at my face and hair, the mud sucked and chewed at my feet, and I fell rather than walked as she led me through the forest. The trees ran with sap, hunched over like emerald-haired mammoths dripping with weight. I drank the air, saturated with bitter dew and the gas rising from the mulch. My clothes bled from my body, drenched with clammy sweat and steam. My shoes were stolen and devoured by the mud. My shirt disintegrated, dripping from my back. My feet were shredded by sharpened sticks and bones concealed in the muck. My nostrils and mouth harbored feeding hives of gnats and mosquitoes. Twisting walls of poison vines rose up like cyclones funneling down from the dense mesh of the forest canopy."

"High up in the wall of the abandoned building, the mute dwarf sat perched on his tall stool like a buzzard and peered down squint-eyed out the black empty window. Waves of collapsed roof and concrete swept out over the lot beneath him, as if his building had crashed down from the sky and sent a rolling swell of destruction outward on impact. Scattered crusts of snow flashed up at him, signaling like mirrors in the debris, causing flecks of color and transparent spiders to drift across his eyes as his pupils shrank against the light. Behind him in the darkness, his bed was a mountain of crusted blankets and frayed quilts he’d extracted from the trash heaps of the neighborhood and piled in a damp mound in the furthest corner of the room. The bedding was still warm from his night’s burrowing and steamed in the cold, surrounded by a flickering horseshoe of melted candles that trapped it like a dim beast in a magic circle."

"The young man was a strip of struggling flesh carried along by the crowd, surfing the heaving waves in a boiling pilgrimage of genetically enraptured insects. The insect mob emptied suddenly into the mouth of a department store and he was left swaying on the corner in the stabbing sun, attacked by the screaming reflections of passing cars and plate glass windows. He pinched his eyes up at the dry hills. They arched above the city like the gnarled backs of drugged lions, stretching up into a heaven that was itself descending in thick sheets of sulfuric mist. The sunlight filtered through this levitating powder and felt more pernicious for it, as if the sun’s rays were transformed by chemical reaction into malevolent xrays, nutriment-seeking carcinogens that penetrated the open pores of unprotected skin and would eat any living thing from the inside-out."

"Everything merges eventually — everything is organic. It’s impossible to distinguish one thing from another thing. When your mind is emptied of selfishness, it crumbles and dissolves in the water. If I cut at my body and concentrate correctly, I won't feel it. Eachtime my heart beats, it jerks violently and whips my spine loose, tugging at the base of my brain. Memories move through the clotted and rotting forest inside my head and crush the present beneath them. My memories don’t belong to me. They’re as unknowable as a centipede fluttering its legs in the dark corner beneath the sink. When an image moves through my nervous system, it’s with the predatory greed of an intruder. My body’s laid open, transparent, defenseless. Each second of time is an individual insect feeding on my blood."

"The older boy lay curled on his side, baking in the sun like a discarded and emaciated fetus left for dead in the rocks by its wandering, mutant giant mother, as she’d scavenged among the washed up trash of the ruined city. His eyes rolled sightlessly in his head as sand flies worked at the gummed saliva in the corners of his lips. His fingers were bunched in against his chest and twitched as if typing out a frenetic description of his dementia."

"I’ve got muscles, sol want to use them. I get up in the morning, pose naked in front of the mirror, and flex for half an hour. Looking at myself, I want to beat someone’s head in with my bare fist. I want to see my fist forced down some asshole’s face, reach down, grab a handful of intestines, and pull them up and out the throat. That would make me feel good. Whatever makes me feel good is what counts. The reason I build my muscles is to use them. That makes me feel good. It'd be senseless to work out for years just for the stupid satisfaction of feeling “healthy” or knowing I look good when I’m about to fuck somebody up the ass. I get satisfaction out of grinding a face in the pavement. I don’t want to question it. I like causing pain. That’s how Iam. I see an immediate response to something I just did. No bullshit. Pure animal pain, me the victor, me in control, me on top, you on the bottom."

"A shadow figure on the wall is cutting off the head of a little boy. The huge and looming murderer is holding up the head like a Viking showing off a war trophy. He’s swinging the head above him by the hair. Shadow-blood flies through the air in a black swirl. A handful of the boy’s brains land in my face like warm cottage cheese. There’s a fisheye close-up of a terrified eye in the TV screen. An oiled young stud does situps on his Soloflex machine, eviscerates himself with an impossibly honed and gleaming kitchen knife, flings his dangling intestines over his shoulder like a sashaying transvestite in a mink stole and walks straight into a day school room full of naked shit-smeared children, who devour him in a bloody tornado of razor-sharp teeth. They’re led away yapping and screeching like a pack of dogs on a multiple leash by their teacher, who wears a neon yellow leotard, purple high-heeled shoes, and has the slicked hard flesh of someone who obviously works out six hours a day herself..."

"My bed sits in the center of the room, a steaming sarcophagus in a dim pagan tomb. The television is on a platform at my feet, washing my swaddled and bloated living corpse with ethereal blue light. Looking to the left, the wall is covered with the desiccated shell-bodies of cockroaches. Each time I catch one (and there are thousands, millions living in the walls, under the floor, in the ceiling — I hear them shifting like the waves in the sea in my sleep), I dry it slowly at low temperature in the oven, then I pin it to the wall. The wall glistens in the flickering light with the sheen of their armor. I’ve pinned them in spiraling primitive shapes that map out the cosmos, landscapes, stars, jagged lightning bolts, skulls, knives, fat hermaphroditic fertility symbols. The designs are difficult to discern, due to the fact that everything is the same brown-on-brown color scheme, but they’re there, if you look closely. I watch the wall for hours each day, like a mandala. The dancing shadows of the television give the detailed beadwork of the wall a sense of grandiosity. I pretend I’m in a cave beneath a jungle burial ground examining, awestruck, an ancient African mural I’ve discovered, cool and perfectly preserved beneath the malarial humidity."

"When I sleep, my dreams mingle with scenes generated from the screen, like sewage discharged into the black sea inside my room. Last night, for instance, in order to revenge the perceived indifference of my lover — a self-composed, confident, and buxom lawyer, as seen on a weekly “gritty and realistic” cop show — I stalked her as she walked a path through the chaparral in the hills of Topanga Canyon dressed in high heels and a power suit, searching for a used condom as evidence in a divorce case turned violent, her architecturally massive hair flowing in the dry baked breeze like the flag of an elite nation of gods."

"I’m laughing my guts out as we fuck. You’re trying to flatter me, telling me how wonderful I am (only because you’ re raping me), and I’m dreaming of stabbing you through the ear with my knife. I’m devoted to the idea of your belittlement. It’s what I live for, what I think about every second. While I’m at work, where I’m treated like a dog, only my body is present. My mind is standing on top of a monolith, looking down on a swelling crowd of cowardly men. It’s my position in life (I’ve always known it) to cut the throats of arrogant men, and weak, humble men also (maybe they deserve oblivion even more). I’m breathing a red fog. It goes down into my lungs and fills me with my real strength: my lust. It’s my secret consciousness, my right to kill, as well as my duty. I love to hold your hand, feeling its buried strength, caressing it into impotence. You feel it too. You feel your power draining into me. You're helpless. There’s nothing you can do about it. I’m a magnet that draws every particle of life out of your body. All you live for is orgasm, for the last drop of life to be sucked out. I’ll never understand how you can be so stupid as to strive for your own denigration. But it isn’t my place to understand you."