“She's got a way about her
I don't know what it is.
But I know that I can't live without her.
She's got a way of pleasin'
I don't know what it is
But there doesn't have to be a reason anyway.”

Source: I've Got Your Number

Song lyrics, Blood on the Tracks (1975), Tangled Up In Blue

Nobel Prize Lecture (1993)
Context: "Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind but wise." Or was it an old man? A guru, perhaps. Or a griot soothing restless children. I have heard this story, or one exactly like it, in the lore of several cultures.
"Once upon a time there was an old woman. Blind. Wise."
In the version I know the woman is the daughter of slaves, black, American, and lives alone in a small house outside of town. Her reputation for wisdom is without peer and without question. Among her people she is both the law and its transgression. The honor she is paid and the awe in which she is held reach beyond her neighborhood to places far away; to the city where the intelligence of rural prophets is the source of much amusement.
One day the woman is visited by some young people who seem to be bent on disproving her clairvoyance and showing her up for the fraud they believe she is. Their plan is simple: they enter her house and ask the one question the answer to which rides solely on her difference from them, a difference they regard as a profound disability: her blindness. They stand before her, and one of them says, "Old woman, I hold in my hand a bird. Tell me whether it is living or dead."
She does not answer, and the question is repeated. "Is the bird I am holding living or dead?"
Still she doesn't answer. She is blind and cannot see her visitors, let alone what is in their hands. She does not know their color, gender or homeland. She only knows their motive.
The old woman's silence is so long, the young people have trouble holding their laughter.
Finally she speaks and her voice is soft but stern. "I don't know", she says. "I don't know whether the bird you are holding is dead or alive, but what I do know is that it is in your hands. It is in your hands."

Song lyrics, Knocked Out Loaded (1986), Brownsville Girl (with Sam Shepard)

"And Yet I Don't Know" monologue http://monologues.co.uk/And-Yet1.htm
And Yet I Don't Know!

On playing Althea Flynt in The People vs. Larry Flynt (1996), Linehan (December 1996)
1996–2005

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

--Carol
Source: Far from the Tree, Ch. 11 Transgender, p 671.

Source: The Secret Life of Bees