“I started crying again, my voice ragged. He told me to calm down. He told me it was going to be all right. And then, he told he'd be there soon.”

“No don't you know my daddy told me,
Told me right from the start
About youth.
He said no matter how old a man is,
He's partly a boy in his heart.
Yeah, and that's the truth.”

“I told the doctor I broke my leg in two places. He told me to stop going to those places.”

“My dad always told me that perseverance furthers. He was right.”

“Bement [her art teacher] told me things to read. He told me of exhibitions to go and see [c. 1917].... the two books that he told me to get were Jeromy Eddy 'Cubists and Post-impressionism' and Kandinsky 'On the Spiritual of Art'… It was some time before I really begun to use the ideas. I didn't start at until I was down in Carolina — alone — thinking things out for myself.”

“I was in analysis and I told my analyst I wanted to be the best sculptor in the world and he said: "Richard, calm down."”

“I went to a urologist. He told me I could go at any time.”

“I came upon a child of god,
He was walking along the road
And I asked him, where are you going
And this he told me:
"I’m going on down to Yasgur’s farm”

“I've always followed my father's advice: he told me, first to always keep my word and, second, to never insult anybody unintentionally. If I insult you, you can be goddamn sure I intend to. And, third, he told me not to go around looking for trouble.”

“The curse of the middle-aged man was knowing — or believing — that he'd told all he had to tell. Soon as you suspect that, you started wanting something, anything, to prove it wasn't so: and that's where the mistakes started, when the bad things happened.”