"Once you are out of your teens you don't usually dance. You never dance in any public place. That's for squares." Of course not. What you did then instead was sit around in dreary 'pads' getting wasted and having big profound discussions for hours on end about the meaning of life, psychoanalysis, the martyrdom of Charlie Parker and materialism in square society. So twelve years later we've come all the way around again except now society has started to bust at the seams so you don't have to be a furtive or blaringly assertive 'bohemian' because everybody's a bohemian that smokes grass and now we can sit around in dorms and crashpads and even parents' houses and get wasted and talk about all the stupid things people talk about now with one difference that they don't have as many protocols and taboos as those lard-ass beatniks but there ain't many of them seem to move much more than the former did either and even if they do they're liable to make a big production out of it.
- Lester Bangs (Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung)
Showing posts with label Quotable Quotes. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Quotable Quotes. Show all posts
Friday, July 24, 2009
Friday, July 3, 2009
War and Peace (tolstoy)
"this happiness is not for you...this happiness is for those who have not in them what there is in you"
"with that peculiar feeling of youth, that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a manner different from that of its elders which is often insincere".
"the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain".
"there is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I understand and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all-important"
"if you go on modeling and modeling, you must get smeared with clay"
"mentioning 'our days' as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of 'our days' and that human characteristics change with the times."
"the whole world is now for me divided into two halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light; the other half is everything where she is not, and there all is gloom and darkness..."
"held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find in his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness, fear at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful sense of the duty that now bound him to her for ever. The present feeling, though not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger and more serious."
"her wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling, and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary, sinfull happiness....and they all struggled and suffered and tormented one another and injured their souls, their eternal souls, for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an instant".
"they were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it for their own free will, but they were all involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work concealed from them but comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy the less they are free"
"at the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second."
"war is the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous"
"was not satisfied with her own words: she felt that they did not convey the passionately poetic feeling she had experienced that day and wished to convey."
"as a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is awry on his head."
"all his life he had looked over the heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes. In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had seen only what was limited, petty, commonplace and senseless.
"when two people quarrel they are always both at fault, and one's own guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other is no longer alive"
"he now repeated in imagination every word that he or she had spoken and pictured every detail of her face and smile, and did not wish to diminish or add anything, but only to repeat it again and again"
"with that peculiar feeling of youth, that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a manner different from that of its elders which is often insincere".
"the insignificance of greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand and the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one alive could understand or explain".
"there is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of everything I understand and the greatness of something incomprehensible but all-important"
"if you go on modeling and modeling, you must get smeared with clay"
"mentioning 'our days' as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing, imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of 'our days' and that human characteristics change with the times."
"the whole world is now for me divided into two halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light; the other half is everything where she is not, and there all is gloom and darkness..."
"held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find in his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness, fear at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful sense of the duty that now bound him to her for ever. The present feeling, though not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger and more serious."
"her wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling, and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary, sinfull happiness....and they all struggled and suffered and tormented one another and injured their souls, their eternal souls, for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an instant".
"they were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant, reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it for their own free will, but they were all involuntary tools of history, carrying on a work concealed from them but comprehensible to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher they stand in the social hierarchy the less they are free"
"at the approach of danger there are always two voices that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too depressing and painful to think of the danger since it is not in man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of events and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till it comes and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second."
"war is the favorite pastime of the idle and frivolous"
"was not satisfied with her own words: she felt that they did not convey the passionately poetic feeling she had experienced that day and wished to convey."
"as a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is awry on his head."
"all his life he had looked over the heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in front of him without straining his eyes. In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had seen only what was limited, petty, commonplace and senseless.
"when two people quarrel they are always both at fault, and one's own guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other is no longer alive"
"he now repeated in imagination every word that he or she had spoken and pictured every detail of her face and smile, and did not wish to diminish or add anything, but only to repeat it again and again"
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Dostoevsky's Best
"god is only a hypothesis...but I admit he is necessary for the sake of order...and if there were no God he would have to be invented"
"the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is individually as separate persons...I would go to the cross if it helped serving mankind, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone even for two days. As soon as someone is there, close to me, their personality oppresses my self esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I can begin to hate even the best of men: because he takes too long blowing his nose or eating his dinner. I become the enemy of people the moment they touch me"
"pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth"
"there is no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man, so long as he remains free, than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible...the care of these pitiful creatures is not just to find something for which to bow down to alone, but to find something everyone else will also believe and bow down too, for it must be altogether. And this need for community of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, and of mankind as a whole from the beginning of time. In the cause of universal worship, they have destroyed each other with the sword. They have made gods and said to each other 'abandon your gods, and come worship ours, else death to your gods and you'. And so it will be until the end of the world, even when all Gods have disappeared from the earth: they will still fall down before idols"
"in every human idea that possesses genius or is new, or even simply in every serious human idea that is conceived in someone's head, there always remains something that cannot be conveyed to other people, even though whole volumes were written and your idea explained for thirty-five years; there will always remain something that is on no account willing to come out of your skull and will remain with you forever; so that you will die without perhaps ever having conveyed to anyone the most important part of your idea"
"What had he to live for?...To live in order to exist?...mere existence had always been too little for him, he had always wanted more"
"once mankind has renounced God, one and all, then the entire world view will fall...people will come together in order to take from life all that it can give, but for happiness and joy in this world only...every hour experience will bring such lofty delight to replace all former hopes of heavenly delight. Each will know himself utterly mortal, without resurrection, and he will love his brother without any reward. Love will satisfy only the moment of life, but the very awareness of its momentariness will increase its fire, inasmuch as previously it was diffused in hopes of an eternal love beyond the grave"
"he could not think for long altogether of anything; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind"
"ghosts are as it were shreds and fragments of other worlds, the beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see them, because he is above all a man on this earth and is bound for the sake of completeness and order to live only in this life. But as soon as one is ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of the organism is broken, one begins to realize the possibility of another world; and the more seriously ill one is, the closer becomes one's contact with that the other world, so that as soon as man dies he steps straight into that world"
"what mother, for example, tenderly loving her child, would not be dismayed and sick with fear if her son or daughter were to go off the rails by even the smallest of margins: 'No, let him be happy and live comfortably, without originality', thinks every mother, as she rocks her child"
"nowadays almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous and are miserable because of it"
"he read persistently over many years, understanding almost nothing at all of it, but perhaps precisely for that reason prizing and loving it all the more."
"you are going to be a very unhappy man in your life...but on the whole you will bless life all the same"
"you've never been able to understand how interesting you'd have become in her eyes if you'd managed to endure your surroundings with firmness and pride...he caught her on his hook because for one thing, he wasn't trying to catch her at all"
"love is gone...but what is gone is painfully dear to me. You now love another, I love another, but still I shall love you eternally"
"for man seeks not so much God as miracles"
"all my life I've been trying to break myself"
"the more I love mankind in general, the less I love people in particular, that is individually as separate persons...I would go to the cross if it helped serving mankind, and yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone even for two days. As soon as someone is there, close to me, their personality oppresses my self esteem and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I can begin to hate even the best of men: because he takes too long blowing his nose or eating his dinner. I become the enemy of people the moment they touch me"
"pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth"
"there is no more ceaseless or tormenting care for man, so long as he remains free, than to find someone to bow down to as soon as possible...the care of these pitiful creatures is not just to find something for which to bow down to alone, but to find something everyone else will also believe and bow down too, for it must be altogether. And this need for community of worship is the chief torment of each man individually, and of mankind as a whole from the beginning of time. In the cause of universal worship, they have destroyed each other with the sword. They have made gods and said to each other 'abandon your gods, and come worship ours, else death to your gods and you'. And so it will be until the end of the world, even when all Gods have disappeared from the earth: they will still fall down before idols"
"in every human idea that possesses genius or is new, or even simply in every serious human idea that is conceived in someone's head, there always remains something that cannot be conveyed to other people, even though whole volumes were written and your idea explained for thirty-five years; there will always remain something that is on no account willing to come out of your skull and will remain with you forever; so that you will die without perhaps ever having conveyed to anyone the most important part of your idea"
"What had he to live for?...To live in order to exist?...mere existence had always been too little for him, he had always wanted more"
"once mankind has renounced God, one and all, then the entire world view will fall...people will come together in order to take from life all that it can give, but for happiness and joy in this world only...every hour experience will bring such lofty delight to replace all former hopes of heavenly delight. Each will know himself utterly mortal, without resurrection, and he will love his brother without any reward. Love will satisfy only the moment of life, but the very awareness of its momentariness will increase its fire, inasmuch as previously it was diffused in hopes of an eternal love beyond the grave"
"he could not think for long altogether of anything; he was simply feeling. Life had stepped into the place of theory and something quite different would work itself out in his mind"
"ghosts are as it were shreds and fragments of other worlds, the beginning of them. A man in health has, of course, no reason to see them, because he is above all a man on this earth and is bound for the sake of completeness and order to live only in this life. But as soon as one is ill, as soon as the normal earthly order of the organism is broken, one begins to realize the possibility of another world; and the more seriously ill one is, the closer becomes one's contact with that the other world, so that as soon as man dies he steps straight into that world"
"what mother, for example, tenderly loving her child, would not be dismayed and sick with fear if her son or daughter were to go off the rails by even the smallest of margins: 'No, let him be happy and live comfortably, without originality', thinks every mother, as she rocks her child"
"nowadays almost all capable people are terribly afraid of being ridiculous and are miserable because of it"
"he read persistently over many years, understanding almost nothing at all of it, but perhaps precisely for that reason prizing and loving it all the more."
"you are going to be a very unhappy man in your life...but on the whole you will bless life all the same"
"you've never been able to understand how interesting you'd have become in her eyes if you'd managed to endure your surroundings with firmness and pride...he caught her on his hook because for one thing, he wasn't trying to catch her at all"
"love is gone...but what is gone is painfully dear to me. You now love another, I love another, but still I shall love you eternally"
"for man seeks not so much God as miracles"
"all my life I've been trying to break myself"
Sunday, January 7, 2007
from music critics/writers
"Males have a weird sense of loyalty towards the bands they like; they sometimes view record buying as a responsibility" -chuck klosterman
"the single biggest symptom of drugs. They make crazy things seem normal and normal things seem crazy" -chuck klosterman
"I love the relationship anyone has with music: because there's something in us that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out" -nick hornby
"your old music cannot sustain you through a life, not if you're someone who listens to music everyday, at every opportunity" -nick hornby
"if something is good today, it will be good tomorrow. Variety is overrated; variety is for philanderers" -chuck klosterman
"do you know people who insist they like 'all kinds of music?' That actually means they like no kinds of music" -chuck klosterman
"most of what passes for rock criticism these days is stultifying in its predictability: timid hacks praising artists more for what they've done in the past than in the present" -jim derogatis
"nostalgia is the most incidious enemy of great art, especially rock'n'roll, a music that is about living in the moment" -jim derogatis
"the whole notion that one somehow has a 'career' instead of just doing whatever you feel like doing at any given time has always amused me when it didn't make me wanna vomit" -lester bangs
"the vision and value or troublesome types can seldom be celebrated until they're no longer troublesome" -lester bangs
"music, like color or a cloud, is neither intelligent nor unintelligent - it just is. I fundamentally, profoundly disagree with anyone who equates musical complication and intelligence with superiority" -nick hornby
"the single biggest symptom of drugs. They make crazy things seem normal and normal things seem crazy" -chuck klosterman
"I love the relationship anyone has with music: because there's something in us that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out" -nick hornby
"your old music cannot sustain you through a life, not if you're someone who listens to music everyday, at every opportunity" -nick hornby
"if something is good today, it will be good tomorrow. Variety is overrated; variety is for philanderers" -chuck klosterman
"do you know people who insist they like 'all kinds of music?' That actually means they like no kinds of music" -chuck klosterman
"most of what passes for rock criticism these days is stultifying in its predictability: timid hacks praising artists more for what they've done in the past than in the present" -jim derogatis
"nostalgia is the most incidious enemy of great art, especially rock'n'roll, a music that is about living in the moment" -jim derogatis
"the whole notion that one somehow has a 'career' instead of just doing whatever you feel like doing at any given time has always amused me when it didn't make me wanna vomit" -lester bangs
"the vision and value or troublesome types can seldom be celebrated until they're no longer troublesome" -lester bangs
"music, like color or a cloud, is neither intelligent nor unintelligent - it just is. I fundamentally, profoundly disagree with anyone who equates musical complication and intelligence with superiority" -nick hornby
Friday, January 5, 2007
on musicians
"i think he loved traveling because he traveled so much inside himself" (regarding jeff buckley)
"that is the mark of a true artist: to be able to intuit what was already in everybody's subconcious and to articulate it for them" (regarding bob dylan)
"smith's singing is almost never an interpretation of the song, but the only correct execution of it. He sounds like he's not singing from his stomach but from his head" (regarding elliott smith)
"nothing the band ever did, either in the studio or onstage, matched the way it sounded in his head" (regarding kurt cobain)
"before he even utters his lyrics, people accept his words as insights into their version of existence" (regarding bruce springsteen)
"he was the only rock singer who sung 'we' convincingly" (regarding john lennon)
"noel gallagher comes out onstage and walks up to the microphone and says 'this is a song about me. It's called Rock N Roll Star'. And then they just threw down their fucking arrogance for the next seventy-five minutes" (regarding oasis)
"he prodded and provoked, tested and tormented everyone around him to see if he could get an honest reaction" (regarding jim morrison)
"of course they're great, they're the best. But they're just complete assholes" (regarding all musicians..said by Danny Fields)
"that is the mark of a true artist: to be able to intuit what was already in everybody's subconcious and to articulate it for them" (regarding bob dylan)
"smith's singing is almost never an interpretation of the song, but the only correct execution of it. He sounds like he's not singing from his stomach but from his head" (regarding elliott smith)
"nothing the band ever did, either in the studio or onstage, matched the way it sounded in his head" (regarding kurt cobain)
"before he even utters his lyrics, people accept his words as insights into their version of existence" (regarding bruce springsteen)
"he was the only rock singer who sung 'we' convincingly" (regarding john lennon)
"noel gallagher comes out onstage and walks up to the microphone and says 'this is a song about me. It's called Rock N Roll Star'. And then they just threw down their fucking arrogance for the next seventy-five minutes" (regarding oasis)
"he prodded and provoked, tested and tormented everyone around him to see if he could get an honest reaction" (regarding jim morrison)
"of course they're great, they're the best. But they're just complete assholes" (regarding all musicians..said by Danny Fields)
from musicians
"Peelin'em off is the easy cheezy way for women, but it helps if you're crap." - dolores d'riordan (the cranberries)
"i was always impressed with a tombstone of a nameless musician i once saw. all it said was 'MUSICIAN - HE PASSED IT ON'" - keith richards (the rolling stones)
"i got evicted from my apartment, i'm living in my car, so I have no address...that week the 'Smells like Teen Spirit' single went on sale in record shops" - kurt cobain (nirvana)
"no, 18,000 people yelling isn't much of a thing. It's nothing new. See, I used to sit in the dark and dream about it" - bob dylan
"you can have some amazing hallucinogenic experiences doing nothing but looking out your window" - bob dylan
"the goal was to create a record that, ultimately, you'll like - but probably not the first time you hear it" - trent reznor (nine inch nails)
"between thought and expression, lies a lifetime" -lou reed (velvet underground)
"the best part of songs are usually accidents. The most transcendent moments in pop music are inevitably unintentional because listeners reinvent those mistakes and give them a personal meaning no artist could ever create on purpose" - jeff tweedy (wilco)
"i was always impressed with a tombstone of a nameless musician i once saw. all it said was 'MUSICIAN - HE PASSED IT ON'" - keith richards (the rolling stones)
"i got evicted from my apartment, i'm living in my car, so I have no address...that week the 'Smells like Teen Spirit' single went on sale in record shops" - kurt cobain (nirvana)
"no, 18,000 people yelling isn't much of a thing. It's nothing new. See, I used to sit in the dark and dream about it" - bob dylan
"you can have some amazing hallucinogenic experiences doing nothing but looking out your window" - bob dylan
"the goal was to create a record that, ultimately, you'll like - but probably not the first time you hear it" - trent reznor (nine inch nails)
"between thought and expression, lies a lifetime" -lou reed (velvet underground)
"the best part of songs are usually accidents. The most transcendent moments in pop music are inevitably unintentional because listeners reinvent those mistakes and give them a personal meaning no artist could ever create on purpose" - jeff tweedy (wilco)
from writers
"If you take the writers away from their typewriters, all you'll have is the sickness that made them type in the beginning" - charles bukowski
"The worst tradgedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood" -jean cocteau
"immature poets imitate; mature poets steal" -t.s.eliot
"in the end, the most interesting people always leave" - paulo coelho
"nothing is more refreshing than the unexpectedly familiar" -paul williams
"comfort murders the passion of the soul" -kahlil gibran
"life is rarely about what happened, it's mostly about what we think happened" -chuck klosterman
"mankind got it all wrong by taking a good idea and building a belief structure on it...its better to have ideas, you can change an idea, changing a belief is trickier, people die for it, people kill for it" -dogma
"we are kings or pawns" -count of monte cristo
"it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open and that's suicide...by tiny, tiny increments" -high fidelity
"I feel I have a sound aborning which is my own, and that Sound if erratic is still my greatest pride, because I would rather write like a dancer shaking my ass to boogaloo inside my head, and perhaps reach only readers who like to use books to shake their asses, than to be or write for the man cloistered in a closet somewhere re-reading Aeschylus while this stupefying world careens crazily past his waxy windows toward its last raving sooty feedback pirouette." - lester bangs
"The worst tradgedy for a poet is to be admired through being misunderstood" -jean cocteau
"immature poets imitate; mature poets steal" -t.s.eliot
"in the end, the most interesting people always leave" - paulo coelho
"nothing is more refreshing than the unexpectedly familiar" -paul williams
"comfort murders the passion of the soul" -kahlil gibran
"life is rarely about what happened, it's mostly about what we think happened" -chuck klosterman
"mankind got it all wrong by taking a good idea and building a belief structure on it...its better to have ideas, you can change an idea, changing a belief is trickier, people die for it, people kill for it" -dogma
"we are kings or pawns" -count of monte cristo
"it made more sense to commit to nothing, keep my options open and that's suicide...by tiny, tiny increments" -high fidelity
"I feel I have a sound aborning which is my own, and that Sound if erratic is still my greatest pride, because I would rather write like a dancer shaking my ass to boogaloo inside my head, and perhaps reach only readers who like to use books to shake their asses, than to be or write for the man cloistered in a closet somewhere re-reading Aeschylus while this stupefying world careens crazily past his waxy windows toward its last raving sooty feedback pirouette." - lester bangs
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