Don Van Vliet

I don't look like a desert person because I stay indoors most of the day and fool around at night. That's what the desert animals do - they don't have a tan either.

Art Carney (1918-2003)

There I was, an 18-year-old mimic rooming with a blind whistler.

Amiri Baraka

A man is either free or he is not. There cannot be any apprenticeship for freedom.

Clint Eastwood

I don't believe in pessimism. If something doesn't come up the way you want, forge ahead. If you think it's going to rain, it will.

Jackie Gleason (1916-1987)

Our dreams are firsthand creations, rather than residues of waking life. We have the capacity for infinite creativity; at least while dreaming, we partake of the power of the Spirit, the infinite Godhead that creates the cosmos.

Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)

I do not think there is any thrill that can go through the human heart like that felt by the inventor as he sees some creation of the brain unfolding to success... such emotions make a man forget food, sleep, friends, love, everything.

Chuck Mangione

Because I don't believe music can be free unless it has something to be free from.

Wallace Stevens (1879-1955)

After the final no there comes a yes and on that yes the future of the world hangs.

Bruce Cockburn

All I ever thought was, 'I'm going to do this as long as I can, and if I can't get paid at it, I'll be a bum doing it.' And so, here I am.

Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)

A man may be a pessimistic determinist before lunch and an optimistic believer in the will's freedom after it.

Jean Paul Sartre (1905-1980)

It is better; heavier, crueler. The mouth you wear for hell.

Gary Snyder

There are those who love to get dirty and fix things. They drink coffee at dawn, beer after work. And those who stay clean, just appreciate things. At breakfast they have milk and juice at night. There are those who do both, they drink tea.

Al Purdy (1918-2000)

'A collected poems' is either a gravestone or a testimonial to survival.

Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

“It is spring again. The earth is like a child that knows poems by heart.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke

Ian Anderson

Seek that which within lies waiting to begin the fight of your life that is everyday.

Ben Johnson (1572-1631)

Drink to me only with thine eyes, And I will pledge with mine; Or leave a kiss but in the cup And I'll not look for wine.

Oscar Peterson (1925-2007)

You not only have to know your own instrument, you must know the others and how to back them up at all times. That's jazz.

Abraham Lincoln

Always bear in mind that your own resolution to succeed is more important than any other.

David Crosby

The people who run record companies now wouldn't know a song if it flew up their nose and died. They haven't a clue, and they don't care. You tell them that, and they go, Yeah? So, your point is?

Patty Duke

Human beings have speculated about the relationship between inspiration and insanity for centuries.

June Jordan

I am a feminist, and what that means to me is much the same as the meaning of the fact that I am Black: it means that I must undertake to love myself and to respect myself as though my very life depends upon self-love and self-respect.

William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

An overflow of good converts to bad.

Lawrence Ferlinghetti

These are international criminals, and the spineless Democrats are doing nothing about it.

Adrienne Rich (1929-2012)

I keep coming back to you in my head, but you couldn't know that, and I have no carbons.

Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)

The Edge... there is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over.