"If ever two were one, then surely we. If ever man were loved by wife, then thee; If ever wife was happy in a man, Compare with me ye women if you can."

"Leave not thy nest, thy dam and sire, Fly back and sing amidst this choir."

"Such cold mean flowers the spring puts forth betime, Before the sun hath thoroughly heat the clime."

""Sister," quoth Flesh, "what liv'st thou on Nothing but Meditation?"

"A Spring returns, and they more youthful made; But Man grows old, lies down, remains where once he's laid."

"What to my Saviour shall I give Who freely hath done this for me? I'll serve him here whilst I shall live And Loue him to Eternity"

"If for thy Father askt, say, thou hadst none; And for thy Mother, she alas is poor, Which caus'd her thus to send thee out of door."

"Even listeners who dispute Cecil Taylor’s jazz credentials wouldn’t deny his creative intensity. They’d just protest that his furious, free-form piano improvisations, pummelling the keyboard with fingers, fists and forearms, bearing no relation to metre or melody and often lasting well over an hour, belong to the European avant-garde, not African-American tradition. But Taylor himself has always disagreed. Though conservatory-trained and possessing a virtuoso technique, he regards jazz as black music, his way, he once said, ‘of holding on to Negro culture’. His fascination with the rhythmic and harmonic abstractions of Stravinsky and Bartók, Dave Brubeck and Lennie Tristano gave way to the potency of African-American pianists: Ellington, Monk, Horace Silver. Revelling in what he called ‘the physicality, the filth, the movement in the attack’, the young Taylor made it his own. He viewed the piano as percussive – ‘88 tuned drums’, his style an amalgam he dubbed ‘rhythm-sound-energy’. His ultimate inspiration was the very force of nature: ‘music is as close as I can become to a mountain, tree or river’. Though that kind of mysticism may seem a long way from blues and swing, Taylor’s work has its own intoxication."

"To feel is the most terrifying thing in this society."

"You practice so you can invent. Discipline? No. The joy of practicing leads you to the celebration of the creation."

"Sometimes when it goes really well, you wonder, "who's that at the piano?""

"I don't expect people who listen to Emerson, Lake, and Palmer to come hear me. I accept that reality."

"Poetry is a natural energy resource of our country. It has no energy crisis, possessing a potential that will last as long as the country. Its power is equal to that of any country in the world."

"Poems in a way are spells against death. They are milestones, to see where you were then from where you are now. To perpetuate your feelings, to establish them. If you have in any way touched the central heart of mankind's feelings, you'll survive."

"Was man made stupid to see his own stupidity? Is God by definition indifferent, beyond us all? Is the eternal truth man's fighting soul Wherein the Beast ravens in its own avidity?"

"I felt the ruthfulness and senselessness of war so acutlely that I wrote the first three stanzas of which, are in effect a prayer."

"The war may present or force a subject; it may bring out a poet, or shock him onto a sensibility of silence. It may kill him. Or germinate the best war poems for exfoliation years after the event."

"A poet knows war without objective war in the world; it was conflict at the root of his mind that impelled him to the masking of these conflicts in the apparent resolution and order of works of art.In a dialectical sense, all poetry is war."

"Deep down he is a gentle, obliquely witty man, possessed of many, many more talents than the acting by which he is known."

"As an actor he is superb. However you read a line, he has anticipated it. He is a fantastically sensitive, decent human being."

"You know you can't act, and if you hadn't been good-looking you never would've gotten a picture."

"Hey, I get enough exercise; I breathe in and I breathe out."

"Got the same attitude I had when I started. Haven't changed anything but my underwear. I've played everything except midgets and women. People can't make up their minds whether I'm the greatest actor in the world - or the worst. Matter of fact, neither can I. It's been said I underplay so much, I could have stayed home. But I must be good at my job. Or they wouldn't haul me around the world at these prices."

"Yeah, I'm unique—like an actor who has only one eye in the middle of his forehead. Or the Elephant Man. I've got a patent on the type. To be an actor is to be a moveable freak. Once you have been up there on that giant screen, everybody knows you—and you know no one. It counts as a source of embarrassment."

"Listen, when I arrived in Los Angeles in the early '40s, there were just 640,000 people. Every loser in the world headed there because there was no competition. The keynote was mediocrity because the film, radio and music businesses had defined that the average mental age of the audience was 12. They handed me the bloodstained hat of a guy who'd fallen off his horse and suddenly I was in the movies—in a Hopalong Cassidy picture. I give hope to the hopeless. People say, "If he can make it, I can be Queen of England."

"No. But it was indicated by other people that I should go there—like my wife, my friends, the woman from Alcoholics Anonymous who came around. My wife, Dottie, was the prime mover. It would have been a disappointment to her if I'd rejected her suggestion. I stayed until they were done with me. I don't know if it 'worked.' I don't understand that."

"I usually take no notice of reviews unless a critic has thought up some new way of describing me. That old one about the way I sleep my way through pictures is so hackneyed now."

"She may have been right. Looking back, I suppose I was expecting, as a young actor, to discuss Stanislavski or 'Acting as an art.' Instead, I palled around with the crew—the grips, the stagehands—and the conversation centered around the two B's—broads and booze."

"For a while it looked like I was going to be stuck in westerns. I figured out I could make 6 a year for 60 years and then retire. I decided I didn't want it. So I started blinking my eyes every time a gun went off in the scenes. That got me out of westerns."

"He is a Presbyterian first and an artist second, which is just as comfortable as trying to be a Presbyterian first and a chorus girl second."

"Use what talent you possess: the woods would be very silent if no birds sang except those that sang best."

"As long as habit and routine dictate the pattern of living, new dimensions of the soul will not emerge."

"Death comes in its own time, in its own way. Death is as unique as the individual experiencing it."

"Time Is... Too slow for those who wait, Too swift for those who fear, Too long for those who grieve, Too short for those who rejoice, But for those who love, Time is Eternity. (Music and Other Poems, 1904)"

"Self is the only prison that can ever bind the soul."

"The lintel low enough to keep out pomp and pride: The threshold high enough to turn deceit aside."

"Oh, come as comes the morn. Serene and strong and full of faith, America, arise, With steady hope and mighty help to join thy brave Allies. O dearest country of my heart, home of the high desire, Make clean thy soul for sacrifice on Freedom’s altar-fire: For thou must suffer, thou must fight, until the warlords cease, And all the peoples lift their heads in liberty and peace."

"Thou warden of the western gate, above Manhattan Bay, The fogs of doubt that hid thy face are driven clean away: Thine eyes at last look far and clear, thou liftest high thy hand To spread the light of liberty world-wide for every land."

"Oh, it’s home again, and home again, America for me! I want a ship that’s westward bound to plow the rolling sea, To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars, Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars."

"I know that Europe’s wonderful, yet something seems to lack; The Past is too much with her, and the people looking back."

"Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air; And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair; And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome; But when it comes to living, there is no place like home."

"No amount of energy will take the place of thought."

"The simple life which blandly ignores all care and conflict, soon becomes flabby and invertebrate, sentimental and gelatinous."

"Christ never asks us to give up merely for the sake of giving up, but always in order to win something better."

"How often a man has cause to return thanks for the enthusiasms of his friends! They are the little fountains that run down from the hills to refresh the mental desert of the despondent."

"Romantic love interests almost everybody, because almost everybody knows something about it, or would like to know."

"Every mountain is, rightly considered, an invitation to climb."

"The promotion from all-day picnics to a two weeks' camping-trip is like going from school to college."

"The mountain is voiceless and imperturbable; and its very loftiness and serenity sometimes make us the more lonely."