lyricists

"Our country, when you grew very old, your head was crowned with white hair. You carried steadfast your children in your arms and gave them what belonged to your coastland.We who here grew up with you as an immature people, as small children, we want to call ourselves kalâtdlit in front of your honorable head!And making use of all that belongs to you, we feel a desire to advance: bettering the conditions, which hold you back, we are firmly resolved to go forward, forward.We want very much to follow the mature people. We are longing to use the freedom of speech and press!There is not at all the slightest reason for holding back. Greenlanders, stand up on your feet, forward! It is well worth to live as men. Show that you can think for yourselves!"

"the more sincere and intimate the relationship between a work and its reader, the better. So the countries that don’t have walls don’t need windows either, because the entire world is their field of vision and they can establish an unmediated relationship with their readers. I, in turn, envy them their free world."

"The Shāhnāmeh is the greatest epic in history. It is a treasure trove of ideas, wisdom, advice, help, guidance, and rites. With this immense work, Ferdowsi revived the spirit of serenity, magnanimity, and pride in the Iranian nation, which had lost itself under the weight of the Arab conquest of Iran. It empowered divided Iranian peoples to unite. Most of our poets, even those who worked as tyrannical kings’ eulogists, have used their poems to remind rulers of the right way to run the state, practice justice, and uphold the welfare of the people…In any age, writers have produced works which were in keeping with their society’s needs and which helped and guided the nation."

"Despite my age, I can almost say that I have never put pen to paper without worrying about censorship. The nightmare of censorship has always cast a shadow over my thoughts. Both under the previous state and under the Islamic state, I have said again and again that, when there is an apparatus for censorship that filters all writing, an apparatus comes into being in every writer’s mind that says: “Don’t write this, they won’t allow it to be published.” But the true writer must ignore these murmurings. The true writer must write. In the end, it will be published one day, on the condition that the writer writes the truth and does not dissemble. Of course, whenever censorship is stringent, most writers resort to metaphor and figurative and symbolic language. And this can help stimulate the imagination. But taking comfort from this fact doesn’t lessen the writer’s dream of attaining freedom."

"Being iconoclastic is only acceptable and desirable if the public—or at least a specific segment of society—is open to it. A literature that the public cannot relate to in any form will not endure. I have been iconoclastic, but I’ve never broken my ties with Iran’s past literature. No one can create a noteworthy work without knowing the tenets of their own language and literature. Language is renewed but it never changes its essence, because the contracts that have come about over time for communication cannot be rescinded so easily. It takes a thousand years before a word, among the thousands of words, dies away in a language or changes its meaning. Literature rests on language. It is a linguistic art. So it cannot sever its relationship with the past. But it can create new methods and styles that differ in structure, form, and content from the past."

"Where my caravan has rested, Flowers I leave you on the grass. All the flowers of love and memory, You will find them when you pass."

"The Lion King"

"Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat"

"Jesus Christ Superstar"

"If you're judging any creative effort, longevity is the reward."

"It's a very similar process in many ways to doing translation, if you translate an opera or a work were the music is inflexible and the words have to go from language to another you have a similar challenge."

"my ambition was to be an English Sondheim. Being a lyricist is the ideal job for a university-educated dilettante, because it uses up all the rubbish in your education."

"In Latino culture the idea of the border is very contemporary. It’s very much of our world, its politics are important to us. It’s also a part of our emotional relationship to the rest of our family in Puerto Rico, or wherever, and our own relationship to roots—the land of our roots—and where we are now…"

"…with any story there are infinite ways to tell it, infinite character arcs to follow, when you drop the needle into the story, and when you pick the needle up."

"…As I was visualizing the play, before I even started writing it, I just imagined three characters and their lives happening, their stories happening, on top of each other. It just visually felt like a fugue to me. If you read music, you can picture a Bach fugue. You have one line and the line can come back inverted and they’ll be playing on top of each other and I was like, that’s cool. That feels like something to me. I also was excited about combining this Latin world and this very western music classics world…"

"I pretty much live in the details of them, and they teach me while I’m writing. I don’t come to it thinking, “I want this character to serve this function in the play.” I have a very inside out approach as opposed to outside in…"

"Se um dia alguém perguntar por mim Diz que vivi para te amar. Antes de ti, só existi Cansado e sem nada para dar."

"Now and then there's a fool such as I am over you. You taught me how to love And now you say that we are through. I'm a fool, but I'll love you dear Until the day I die Now and then there's a fool such as I."

"The man who wrote this classic was Bill Trader and he actually passed away in 2003 in South Carolina. Not a bad run from the sound of it. Mark Matthews continues the story by bringing in an old musician friend of Bill’s named Bud Orr. As Bud tells it, Bill couldn’t read or write music and would often bring him songs and for five bucks Bud would write out a lead sheet for him. Bill would then sell try to sell them in Nashville."

"Pardon me, if I'm sentimental When we say goodbye , Don't be angry with me should I cry. When you're gone, yet I'll dream A little dream as years go by… Now and then there's a fool such as I."

"O! Lover, Enjoyment on the soft body of a lotus is always risky and inconsistent because its route is always surrounded by thorns."

"The ultimate source of energy, the sun is ready to set. The leaves of the blooming lotus flower in the pond are losing their lustre. A bumblebee, sitting on that lotus is enjoying the romantic pleasure and murmuring passionate songs."

"The wheel of Time wrote the first half of the poetry of mass destruction on the black board of the ashes of a funeral ground by dint of a pair of pens of nuclear bombs."

"Dances an endless illusion, A woman of desire endures in my heart, I wait, O! Almighty cut the net of passion, You are the ultimate Source of light. Gitamohanam,(spiritual Hymns),"

"No doubt, the poetry, overjoyed by swallowing the beverage of passionate thoughts, delights the mind. But she does not realize the sorrows and troubles of the poor. Forget depicting the beauty of passions and present your poetry as a necklace of thought gems to swell the soul."

"The slippers of the mortal Earth, Now touched the chest of the Moon. Oh, It is shameful that"

"Men of Harlech! On to glory, See your banner, famed in story, Waves these burning words before ye, "Britain scorns to yield!""

"In my heart she's my kind of girl."

"The Candy Man can"

"What kind of fool am I? I never fell in love."

"I am what I am I am my own special creation So come take a look Give me the hook or the ovation It's my world that I want to have a little pride in My world and it's not a place I have to hide in Life's not worth a damn till you can say Hey world I am what I am."

"'Mid pleasures and palaces though we may roam, Be it ever so humble, there 's no place like home; A charm from the skies seems to hallow us there, Which sought through the world is ne'er met with elsewhere."

"An exile from home splendour dazzles in vain, Oh give me my lowly thatched cottage again; The birds singing gayly, that came at my call, Give me them, and that peace of mind dearer than all."

"A word in season spoken May calm the troubled breast."

"The bud is on the bough again, The leaf is on the tree."

"Come o'er the moonlit sea, The waves are brightly glowing."

"Come, wander with me, for the moonbeams are bright On river and forest, o'er mountain and lea."

"I have heard the mavis singing Its love-song to the morn; I've seen the dew-drop clinging To the rose just newly born."

"Meek and lowly, pure and holy, Chief among the "blessed three.""

"The morn was fair, the skies were clear, No breath came o'er the sea."

"We have lived and loved together Through many changing years; We have shared each other's gladness, And wept each other's tears."

"Poetry can only change the notion of relationships between things. Culture cannot change without a change in institutions."

"New York is a woman holding, according to history, a rag called liberty with one hand and strangling the earth with the other."

"I wanted to break the linearity of poetic text to mess with it, if you will. The poem is meant to be a network rather than a single rope of thought."

"Poor Jenny, bright as a penny! Her equal would be hard to find. She lost one dad and mother, A sister and a brother-- But she would make up her mind."

"In time the Rockies may crumble, Gibraltar may tumble, They're only made of clay, But our love is here to stay."

"They all laughed at Christopher Columbus When he said the world was round; They all laughed when Edison recorded sound."

"You like potato and I like po-tah-to, You like tomato and I like to-mah-to; Potato, po-tah-to, tomato, to-mah-to – Let's call the whole thing off!"

"The way you wear your hat, The way you sip your tea, The mem'ry of all that – No, no! They can't take that away from me!"

"I got rhythm, I got music, I got my man Who could ask for anything more?"