"Goddess Peak" [神女峰, Shennü feng], in The Cambridge History of Chinese Literature, Volume II: From 1375 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), p. 649
“I'd rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.”
Source: The Turtles of Tasman
Help us to complete the source, original and additional information
Jack London 77
American author, journalist, and social activist 1876–1916Related quotes

“I'd rather die on my feet, than live on my knees.”
Prefiero morir de pie que vivir de rodillas.
As quoted in Liberation Theologies in North America and Europe (1979) by Gerald H. Anderson and Thomas F. Stransky, p. 281; this is sometimes misattributed to the more modern revolutionary, Che Guevara, and to "La Pasionaria" Dolores Ibárruri, especially in Spain, where she popularized it in her famous speeches during the Spanish Civil War, to José Martí, and to Aeschylus who is credited with a similar declaration in Prometheus Bound: "For it would be better to die once and for all than to suffer pain for all one's life." The phrase "better that we should die on our feet rather than live on our knees" was spoken by François-Noël Gracchus Babeuf in his defence of the Conspiracy of Equals in April 1797. In French it read, 'Ne vaut-il pas mieux emporter la gloire de n'avoir pas survecu a la servitude?' but translated this bears no resemblance whatever to the quote under discussion. see: The Defense of Gracchus Babeuf Before the High Court of Vendome (1967), edited and translated by John Anthony Scott, p. 88 and p. 90, n. 12.
Spanish variants:
¡Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado!
I'd prefer to die standing, than to live always on my knees.
As quoted in Operación Cobra : historia de una gesta romántica (1988) by Alvaro Pablo Ortiz and Oscar Lara, p. 29
Variant translations:
Men of the South! It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
With an extension, as quoted in Timeless Mexico (1944) by Hudson Strode, p. 259
I would rather die standing than live on my knees!
It is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!
I prefer to die standing than to live forever kneeling.
Prefer death on your feet to living on your knees.

“I wanted to try to be a real live person, rather than just singing songs about them.”
As quoted in "The Rumpus Interview with Thao Nguyen" in The Rumpus (5 August 2013) https://therumpus.net/2013/08/the-rumpus-interview-with-thao-nguyen/
“He was like a song I'd heard once in fragments but had been singing in my mind ever since.”
Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

[Post Staff, http://www.phnompenhpost.com/national/recollections-king-father, Recollections of the King Father, 3 February 2013, 29 June 2015, Phnom Penh Post]

“His rhythm is the only one I can sing my songs to.”
On Chuck Berry, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/style/longterm/movies/videos/chuckberryhailhailrocknrollpgharrington_a0aa6d.htm
Song lyrics, Others

A History of the Lyre
The Venetian Bracelet (1829)

“I'd really rather put songs on people's lips than in their ears.”
1994 interview, quoted in Filene Romancing the Folk: Public Memory & American Roots Music (2000), p. 197

Xavier Ternisien, A "Charlie Hebdo", on n'a "pas l’impression d’égorger quelqu’un avec un feutre" http://www.lemonde.fr/actualite-medias/article/2012/09/20/je-n-ai-pas-l-impression-d-egorger-quelqu-un-avec-un-feutre_1762748_3236.html, Le Monde, 20 september 2012.