Great Throughts Treasury

"In our rags of light, all dressed to kill."

"Israel, and you who call yourself Israel, the Church that calls itself Israel, and the revolt that calls itself Israel, and every nation chosen to be a nation?none of these lands is yours, all of you are thieves of holiness, all of you at war with Mercy."

"In the broken places, the light shines through."

"In sleep each one is an only child. They turned, shifted position, pulling on one leg, stretched an elbow, they turned back, changed position again, a series of giant crabs, each on his own white sandy beach."

"It doesn't matter what you do because it's going to happen anyway."

"In streams of light I clearly saw the dust you seldom see, Out of which the Nameless makes A Name for one like me... All busy in the sunlight the flecks did float and dance, and I was tumbled up with them In formless circumstance."

"It doesn't matter how anything happens."

"It is a miracle. I don?t know where the good songs come from or else I?d go there more often."

"It is different [to perform in Israel] because it arises from very deep wells of affiliation."

"It is in love that we are made, in love we disappear."

"It is painful to recall a past intensity, to estimate your distance from the Belsen heap, to make your peace with numbers. Just to get up each morning is to make a kind of peace."

"It just takes a long time for me [to write a song]. I'm very slow. And it comes, kind of, by dribbles and drops."

"It is easy to display a wound, the proud scars of combat. It is hard to show a pimple."

"It was only when you walked away I saw you had the perfect ass. Forgive me for not falling in love with your face or your conversation."

"It?s a depressing habit you have of loving to sneeze and of eating apples as if they were juicier for you and being the first one to exclaim how good the movie is. You depress people. We like apples too."

"It was a dance of masks and every mask was perfect because every mask was a real face and every face was a real mask so there was no mask and there was no face for there was but one dance in which there was but one mask but one true face which was the same and which was a thing without a name which changed and changed into itself over and over."

"It?s coming from the feel that this ain?t exactly real or it?s real, but it ain?t exactly there. From the wars against disorder, from the sirens night and day, from the fires of the homeless, from the ashes of the gay, democracy is coming to the USA. It?s coming through a crack in the wall."

"It?s a pity if someone? has to console himself for the wreck of his days with the notion that somehow his voice, his work embodies the deepest, most obscure, freshest, rawest oyster of reality in the unfathomable refrigerator of the heart?s ocean, but I am such a one, and there you have it."

"It?s very hard to really untangle the real reasons why you do anything. But I was always interested in music and it seemed to me I always played guitar. I always associated song and singing with some sort of nobility of spirit. The first songs I learned were of the workers movement. I always thought that this was the best way to say the most important things? I don?t mean the most ponderous or pompous things. I mean the important things ? like how you feel about things, how you feel about someone else ? and I always thought this was the way to do it."

"It's been a long time since I've stood on a stage in London. Was about 14 or 15 years ago, I was 60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream. Since then I've taken a lot of Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Effexor, Ritalin, Focalin. I've also studied deeply in the philosophies and the religions, but cheerfulness kept breaking through."

"It?s also very difficult to untangle influences because you represent the sum of everything you?ve seen or heard or experienced. The kind of language that I?d like to have been influenced by the Bible and Cervantes, by the old masters. The kind of sensibility I?ve been influenced [by], of course, [is] a great deal by the French writers ? Camus, Sartre ? the Irish poets ? Yeats ? the English poets. And, of course, we had our own little group of poets in Montreal years back, all very fine, one man especially standing out ? I think one of the finest writers in the language ? Irving Leighton. I don?t think he?s known [outside Canada] at all."

"It?s coming through a hole in the air from those nights in Tiananmen Square, It?s coming from the feel that this ain?t exactly real or it?s real, but it ain?t exactly there. From the wars against disorder from the sirens night and day, from the fires of the homeless from the ashes of the gay."

"It's four in the morning, the end of December I'm writing you now just to see if you're better."

"It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender."

"It's coming to America first, the cradle of the best and of the worst. It?s here they got the range And the machinery for change And it's here they got the spiritual thirst. It's here the family's broken And it's here the lonely say That the heart has got to open In a fundamental way: Democracy is coming to the U.S.A. O mighty Ship of State! To the Shores of Need Past the Reefs of Greed Through the Squalls of Hate Sail on, sail on."

"It's like a bear stumbling into a beehive or a honey cache: I'm stumbling right into it and getting stuck, and it's delicious and it's horrible and I'm in it and it's not very graceful and it's very awkward and it's very painful and yet there's something inevitable about it."

"It's time that we began to laugh and cry and cry and laugh about it all again."

"It's true that all the men you knew were dealers who said they were through with dealing Every time you gave them shelter. I know that kind of man It's hard to hold the hand of anyone who is reaching for the sky just to surrender."

"It's the notion that there is no perfection - that there is a broken world and we live with broken hearts and broken lives but still there is no alibi for anything. On the contrary, you have to stand up and say hallelujah under those circumstances."

"I've been where you're hanging, I think I can see where you're pinned when you're not feeling holy, your loneliness says that you've sinned."

"I've always held the song in high regard because songs have got me through so many sinks of dishes and so many humiliating courting events."

"I've expressed my gratitude to my son many times. And his career is far from undistinguished, and it was a great privilege to have someone of this skill bringing this album to conclusion."

"It's you my love, you who are the stranger."

"I've never thought of myself as a religious person."

"I've often said if I knew where the good songs came from, I'd go there more often."

"I've forgotten most of what I've read and, frankly, it never seemed very important to me or to the world."

"I've seen the future, brother: it is murder."

"Journalists, especially English journalists, were very cruel to me. They said I only knew three chords when I knew five!"

"Just as a bird in its cage. As a drinker among the bustle of midnight, so I tried to be free, my way."

"Lift me like an olive branch and be my homeward dove. Dance me to the end of love."

"Lets sing another song, boys/ this one has grown old and bitter."

"Like a bird on a wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir, I have tried in my way to be free!"

"Let judges secretly despair of justice: their verdicts will be more acute. Let generals secretly despair of triumph; killing will be defamed. Let priests secretly despair of faith: their compassion will be true."

"Listen to a name so private it can burn hear it said aloud and learn and learn History is a needle for putting men asleep anointed with the poison of all they want to keep Now."

"Like any dealer he was watching for the card that is so high and wild he'll never need to deal another. He was just some Joseph looking for a manger."

"Like the fog that has no clue after green hills now, so mine does not remain a trace on your body anywhere, ever. The wind and hawk when one, where mine that moment and day? For the time we are one and then silence and dream. Like the stars at night over us what hidden shine in the darkness, so the light is in us and when we are away, alone."

"Love is a fire. It burns everyone/It disfigures everyone/It is the world's excuse for being ugly."

"Listen, my friend, listen to the present, the right now, it's all around us, painted like a target, red, white and blue. Sail into the target like a dart, a fluke bull's eye in a dirty pub. Empty your memory and listen to the fire around you. Don't forget your memory, let it exist somewhere precious in all the colors that it needs but somewhere else, hoist your memory on the ship of State like a pirate's sail, and aim yourself at the tinkly present."

"Love cannot gather into barns. Is there a part of Jesus in every mass-fabricated crucifix? All victims that we ourselves do not kill or imprison the imaginary victim. And F. said: I'm wearing my heart like a crown. Then they disappeared? and all the other intricate names standing for purity; pale temples and crumbling altars disappeared under the scarlet glaze. The most original in a person's nature is often what is most desperate. Thus forced upon the world new systems of people who simply cannot stand to live with that. The only thing that matters to a Creator is that his system is unique. My hatred of the pain is something so extraordinary tremendous fantastic, much more important than your hatred of the pain, but my body is so much more central, I am pain Moscow, you are just a weather station on the land. Be with me, religious amulets of all kinds, you smoke hanging in silver chains, you stuck-painted on underwear with a safety pin, you who hide in the black chest hair, you who runs the tram wheels in the gap between the old happy women's breasts, you who accidentally pressed into the skin when someone loves you who fingered as coins and on what you're looking for, you who have strayed from the clothes for cuddling fifteen year olds, you who put in the mouth while you think, you very precious that only skinny little girl child for permission to wear, you are hanging from the belt chamber together with tied ties, you who gets kissed for bringing luck, ye that pressure from the neck in anger, you who are depressed, you are engraved, you who gets exists tramway track to get a new and amusing shape, you trapped in the trim... We are lying all dream after dream in each other's arms. Morning after morning finds me alone among winter worn leaves with frozen snot and tears."

"Love is not a victory march. It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah"