Son Quotes - Page 70

Why you need a reason for everything? Reason is something people say to make sense of things that don't make sense.

You know, it's a pretty mysterious thing still, why you start the songs you start, and the specific flavor of them, the nature of them. I don't know about other writers, but, for me, it's still somewhat out of my control. It's not really a logical process.

The effect on men has been very bad, too, of the omission of women's history, because men have been given the impression that they're much more important in the world than they actually are. It has fostered illusions of grandeur in every man that are unwarranted. If you can think as a man that everything great in the world and its civilization was created by men, then naturally you have to look down on women. And naturally, you have to have different aspirations for your sons and for your daughters.

Music's staying power is a function of how timeless the lyrics, song and production are.

I've been on the songs of all these rappers that put out an album, and my music is still better.

It's not a persons mistakes which define them - it's the way they make amends.

Goblins burrowed in the earth, elves sang songs in the trees: Those were the obvious wonders of reading, but behind them lay the fundamental marvel that, in stories, words could command things to be.

Young man, two are the forces most precious to mankind. The first is Demeter, the Goddess. She is the Earth -- or any name you wish to call her -- and she sustains humanity with solid food. Next came Dionysus, the son of the virgin, bringing the counterpart to bread: wine and the blessings of life's flowing juices. His blood, the blood of the grape, lightens the burden of our mortal misery. Though himself a God, it is his blood we pour out to offer thanks to the Gods. And through him, we are blessed.

A son is a son 'til he gets a wife, but a daughter is a daughter all her life.

If you finish like a photograph, on the other hand, the picture has as much personality as a photograph.

What do you do with your anger when the person you're mad at goes off and dies? Bury it? Bury it inside you?

I always thought my days spent in darkness [as a child she had cataracts and was unable to see for nearly four years] gave me a very special sensitivity. Much later, when I really wanted to hear, really 'see' a song, I'd close my eyes, and when I wanted to bring it out of the very depths of myself, out of my guts, out of my belly, when the song had to come from far away, I'd close my eyes.

The biggest lesson I've learned . . . was that if you have all the fresh water you want to drink and all the food you want to eat, you ought never to complain about anything.

Be a father, if not, why bother, son? A boy can make 'em, but a man can raise one. If you did it, admit it and stick with it.

A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.

I like to write songs about what's happening, what I see around me and what I hear. Everyday life. Someone may be talking to me and I may take it from that.

I believe that a writer is a person who writes. An author is a person who has written.

This was the first Memorial Day [Monday, May 1st, 1865]. African Americans invented Memorial Day in Charleston, South Carolina. What you have there is Black Americans recently freed from slavery announcing to the world with their flowers, their feet, and their songs what the war had been about. What they basically were creating was the Independence Day of a Second American Revolution.

I would want my legacy to be that I was a great son, father and friend.

I find it very fascinating that one person or a group of people can get together as a choir and come up with a song that ends up inspiring people to create emotions, love and togetherness. Communication, which comes from this idea that sparks off of humanity and becomes something that is cherished and loved by the people, is very fascinating to me.

Everybody needs that one person that takes you to the right place to see all the positives in your life.

Avoid trouble with those who are fanatics; they remain imprisoned in exclusivism and deserve compassion just as any other prisoner.

I know that there is not in the world a more subtle poison than that which is extracted from and administered by books.

Lessons are not given, they are taken.

Unfortunately, there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual's conscious life, the blacker and darker it is. If an inferiority is conscious, one always has a chance to correct it