Great Throughts Treasury

"The law of empathy, by which he could, by his will, transfer himself into an object or a work of art, and thus influence the outer world. He did not feel redeemed by the work he did. He did not seek redemption. He sought to see what others did not, the projection of his imagination."

"The light poured through the windows upon his photographs and the poem of us sitting together a last time. Robert dying: creating silence. Myself, destined to live, listening closely to a silence that would take a lifetime to express."

"The mind of a child is like a kiss on the forehead ? open and disinterested"

"The Lord gives us wings. He gives us a stomach, we can fly or vomit."

"The moment of creative impulse is what an artist gives you. You look at a Pollock, and it can't give you the tools to do a painting like that yourself, but in doing the work, Pollock shares with you the moment of creative impulse that drove him to do that work."

"The new artists coming through were very materialistic and Hollywood, not so engaged in communication."

"The thing is, it's not uncool to worry about people who seem like they're going on the wrong path. There's nothing cool about being self-destructive."

"The people have the power to redeem the work of fools. Upon the meek the graces shower, it's decreed the people rule."

"Then I read Little Women, and of course, like a lot of really young girls, I was very taken with Jo - Jo being the writer and the misfit."

"The thing I've always liked about performing is that I decide what I want to wear, whether I want to comb my hair."

"There are so many great 19th-century photographers, and it's really my favorite period, but the amateurs did such beautiful work."

"These are the times, the times of our own, these are the shapes the world we formed."

"Those who have suffered understand suffering and therefore extend their hand."

"There's always new stuff, that's for sure."

"There were days, rainy gray days, when the streets of Brooklyn were worthy of a photograph, every window the lens of a Leica, the view grainy and immobile. We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed. We lay in each other's arms, still awkward but happy, exchanging breathless kisses into sleep."

"To be an artist is to enter into competition with god."

"Truthfully, I don't really think of myself as a photographer. I don't have all the disciplines and knowledge of a person who's spent their life devoted to photography."

"To me, punk rock is the freedom to create, freedom to be successful, freedom to not be successful, freedom to be who you are. It's freedom."

"Vowels are the most illuminated letters in the alphabet. Vowels are the colors and souls of poetry and speech."

"Usually when I go to a place for the first time, unless there's something historical or spectacular that nature has to offer, the first thing I like to do is see what's on the minds of the people."

"We believe we will raise the sky, we got to fly over the land, over the sea. Fate unwinds and if we die, souls arise. God, do not seize me please."

"We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll. We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation. We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity. We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms. We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone."

"We learned we wanted too much. We could only give from the perspective of who we were and what we had. Apart, we were able to see with even greater clarity that we didn?t want to be without each other."

"We promised that we'd never leave one another again, until we both knew we were ready to stand on our own. And this vow, through everything we were yet to go through, we kept."

"We never had any children, he said ruefully. Our work was our children."

"We tried not to age, but time had its rage."

"We used to laugh at our small selves, saying that I was a bad girl trying to be good and that he was a good boy trying to be bad. Through the years these roles would reverse, then reverse again, until we came to accept our dual natures. We contained opposing principles, light and dark."

"We wanted, it seemed, what we already had, a lover and a friend to create with, side by side. To be loyal, yet be free."

"We went our separate ways, but within walking distance of one another."

"What a model of an artist was for me was an artist who worked. Picasso was the ultimate model, because the work ethic he had."

"We were walking toward the fountain, the epicenter of activity, when an older couple stopped and openly observed us. Robert enjoyed being noticed, and he affectionately squeezed my hand. Oh, take their picture, said the woman to her bemused husband, I think they're artists. Oh, go on, he shrugged. They're just kids."

"Well, I'm not one of those people who needs the limelight. If I'm performing, that's what I'm doing. If I'm not, I don't long for it. I don't need the approval of an audience, or applause."

"What I really like is an intelligent review. It doesn't have to be positive. A review that has some kind of insight, and sometimes people say something that's startling or is so poignant."

"We were a crew of misfits, even within the liberal terrain of an art school. We often joked that we were a ?losers? salon.?"

"We were as Hansel and Gretel and we ventured out into the black forest of the world."

"What I say should always be prefaced with this: I'm not really politically articulate. I just try to be like Thomas Paine: what is common sense? So when I say these things to you, I am speaking from a humanist point of view. I just look around and see what's wrong."

"What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?"

"What is the soul? What color is it? I suspected my soul, being mischievous, might slip away while I was dreaming and fail to return. I did my best not to fall asleep, to keep it inside of me where it belonged."

"What I wanted to do in rock 'n roll was merge poetry with sonic scapes, and the two people who had contributed so much to that were Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison."

"What matters is the work: the string of words propelled by God becoming a poem, the weave of color and graphite scrawled upon a sheet that magnifies His motion. To achieve within the work a perfect balance of faith and execution. From this state of mind becomes a light, life-charged."

"What will happen to us? I asked. There will always be us, he answered."

"When I stopped performing for 16 years and lived in Michigan and was married and raising my children, I wrote about four or five books. I haven't published them. I just haven't gotten around to it for several reasons."

"When I was young, all I wanted was to write books and be an artist."

"When I was in high school, to me being a model was the heaviest. It was the logical extension of being an artist's mistress."

"When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William's secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel."

"When we got to the part where we had to improvise an argument in a poetic language, I got cold feet. ?I can?t do this,? I said. ?I don?t know what to say.? ?Say anything,? he said. ?You can?t make a mistake when you improvise.? ?What if I mess it up? What if I screw up the rhythm?? ?You can?t,? he said. ?It?s like drumming. If you miss a beat, you create another.? In this simple exchange, Sam taught me the secret of improvisation, one that I have accessed my whole life."

"When I was younger, I felt it was my duty to wake people up. I thought poetry was asleep. I thought rock 'n' roll was asleep."

"When Robert and Patti were young and poor, only one of them could afford to go into a gallery at a time. The other waited outside, waiting to hear about it."

"When I was younger, I also dreamed of being an opera singer, simply because of Maria Callas."

"When we awoke he greeted me with his crooked smile, and I knew he was my knight."