"If women didn't exist, all the money in the world would have no meaning." - Aristotle Onassis

"Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got."
"”Janis Joplin

"It's so clear that you have to cherish everyone. I think that's what I get from these older black women, that every soul is to be cherished, that every flower is to bloom."
"”Alice Walker

quote:

Originally posted by FireFly:
"Don't compromise yourself. You are all you've got."
"”Janis Joplin

My life motto.

The News:

"Whoever controls the flow of information dictates our perceptions and perspectives, whoever controls the news shapes our destiny." - George Clinton

"Whoever wants to fight lies and ignorance today, whoever wants to speak the truth must surmount at least five difficulties. S(He) must have the courage to speak the truth when it is everywhere stifled; the intelligence to recognize it when it is everywhere hidden; the art to make it manageable like a weapon; the judgement to choose who will know how to make it effective; and finally enough guile to make them understand it." - Bertol Brecht, 1935

From James Baldwin's essay 'The Fire Next Time'

"In all jazz, and especially in the blues, there is something tart and ironic, authoritative and double-edged. White Americans seem to feel that happy songs are happy and sad songs are sad, and....do not understand the depths out of which such an ironic tenacity comes, but they suspect that the force is sensual, and they are terrified of sensuality and do not any longer understand it....

To be sensual, I think, is to accept and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread. It will be a great day for America, incidentally, when we begin to eat bread again, instead of the blasphemous and tasteless foam rubber that we have substituted for it. And I am not being frivolous now, either."
.

John Banville won the 2005 Man Booker Prize. Now in its 37th year, the Man Booker Prize is acknowledged as the most prestigious literary award in Britain - the winner takes home a cheque for £50,000.

"All works of art are solutions to technical poblems, namely how to put down the story at hand.

How am I going to do it beautifully, how am I going to do it convincly, how am I going to do it accurately?"

"The world is round but language is square; forcing language to fit the world, even getting the square to bend its sides a little bit, is very difficult indeed."

"My first thought [as a winner] was, now I can pay my mortgage off; my second was just imagine all the people who hate me now. It's a sweet moment in a writer's life."

This thought came to me over the weekend:

"The art of life is to find something you're passionate about and to do it."

"I've worked in a factory. I was a garbage man. I worked in a post office. It's not that long ago. I like to think that I'm just a regular guy".
~ Denzel Washington

"I still have my unemployment books and I remember when I worked for the sanitation department and the post office".
~ Denzel Washington

"People don't come over to the house. My wife socializes, not me. I don't have a lot of friends".
~ Denzel Washington

"Working on Cry Freedom was wonderful in that I got to go to Africa for the first time, and that was an amazing thing. But in terms of the role itself, I don't have a favourite".
~ Denzel Washington
.

"Music should never be harmless". ~ Robbie Robertson.

by Frank Zappa ~ remember him?

"A mind is like a parachute. It doesnt work if it not open".

"Stupidity is the basic building block of the universe".

"There is no hell. There is only France".

"Don't mind your make-up, you'd better make your mind up".

"Without music to decorate it, time is just a bunch of boring production deadlines or dates by which bills must be paid".

"I'm not black, but there's a whole lot of times I wish I could say I'm not white".

A tree that does not know how to dance, will be taught by the wind.

~ Akan Tribe Proverb, Ghana

"We know that whatever was sown in the preceding seasons has been reaped, and we accept these results.

It does not matter whether the fruit is positive or negative; the harvest determines our direction and recomittment for the New Year."

~ Dorothy Winbush Riley
.

"We are all visitors to this time, this place. We are just passing through. Our purpose here is to observe, to learn, to grow, to love... and then we return home."

~ Unknown indigenous Australian


"For in the end, we will conserve only what we love. We will love only what we understand. We will understand only what we are taught."

~ Baba Dioum

"Writing and performing should deepen the meaning of words, should illuminate, transfix and transform."
~ bell hooks

Charlie Parker and Gene Ramey, Kansas City, 1940

Of Charlie Parker, Gene Ramey said...

"Everything had a musical significance for him. He'd hear dogs barking, for instance, and he would say it was a conversation -- and if he was blowing his horn he would have something to play that would portray that thought to us. When we were riding the car between jobs we might pass down a country lane and see the trees and some leaves, and he'd have some sound for that. And maybe some girl would walk past on the dance floor while he was playing, and something she might have would give him an idea for something to play on his solo. As soon as he would do that, we were all so close we'd all understand just what he meant."

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FireFly,

"That which the dream shows is the shadow of such wisdom as exists in man, even if during his waking state he may know nothing about it... We do not know it because we are fooling away our time with outward and perishing things, and are asleep in regard to that which is real within ourself."

~ Philipus Aureolus Paracelsus (1493 - 1541)

Imagine indeed...

John Lennon - Imagine

Imagine there's no Heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

the first 2 lines of Jealous Guy sigh...

"I was dreaming of the past.
And my heart was beating fast"

"Nihilism is best done by professionals".
~ Iggy Pop

and so timely!