Quotes about bar (540 quotes, page 4) | Quotes of famous people

“Now that to me is lovely music. Really, that type of thing really moves me. This, of course, is Bill Evans, Scott LaFaro, and Paul Motian…. Even Scott's playing on this particular album should disprove all the "naughty" things people said about him, about his being too active, getting in people's way; because the one thing about Scotty, with all his technique, was that he had a perceptivity, which let him use it judiciously. He started this record by playing on the first beat of every bar. He wasn't even playing in two, and any man who has that much technique, who knows where to limit himself, to me, is just great. And of course Bill plays lovely on the thing. That's another five-star.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

Reviewing a "live recording https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-jsW61e_-w of the Bill Evans Trio performing "My Foolish Heart," from the album Waltz for Debby; as quoted in "Clare Fischer: Blindfold Test" http://www.mediafire.com/view/fix6ane8h54gx/Clare_Fischer#rjvay58eo774rhe by Leonard Feather, in Downbeat (October 25, 1962), p. 39

Love , People , Music , Way

“Trump is an ignorant demagogue who traffics in racist and misogynistic slurs and crazy conspiracy theories. He champions protectionism and isolationism — the policies that brought us the Great Depression and World War II. He wants to undertake a police-state roundup of undocumented immigrants and to bar Muslims from coming to this country. He encourages his followers to assault protesters and threatens to sue or smear critics. He would abandon Japan and South Korea and break up the most successful alliance in history — NATO. But he has kind words for tyrants such as Vladimir Putin. There has never been a major party nominee in U. S. history as unqualified for the presidency. The risk of Trump winning, however remote, represents the biggest national security threat that the United States faces today.”

Max Boot (1969) American writer and historian

The Republican Party is dead, May 8, 2016, latimes.com, Los Angeles Times http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-boot-republicans-in-exile-20160508-story.html,

War , World , History , Success

“My God, what am I doing here? It's weird. How do you get to the Met? Money! Lots and lots of money! I can imagine Pavarotti next door at the improv going, "Two Jews walk into a bar…"”

Robin Williams (1951–2014) American actor and stand-up comedian

A Night at the Met (1986)

Money , God , Imagination

“Is this a real blue-collar bar or a simulacrum thereof?”
“Both. It started out as a pure simulacrum, a few years ago, before the economy crashed, when it was hip for twentysomethings to move down here and dress in Carhartts and Utilikilts. But they did such a good job of it that actual blue-collar people began to show up. And then the economy did crash, and the hip people discovered that they were, in actual point of fact, blue collar, and probably always would be. So you’ve got guys here who run lathes. But they have colored Mohawks and college degrees, and they program the lathes in computer languages. I was trying to come up with a name for them. Cerulean-collar workers, maybe.”
“Do a lot of people stop by here on their way to the private jet terminal?”
“You’d be surprised.”

Neal Stephenson book Reamde

Day 17, Seattle
Reamde (2011), Part II: American Falls

People , Color , Way , Guy

“How much of our literature, our political life, our friendships and love affairs, depend on being able to talk peacefully in a bar!”

John Wain (1925–1994) British writer

As given in Simpson's Contemporary Quotations (1988) p. 301

Love , Life , Friendship , Literature

“It was the town that made America famous.
The churches full and the kids all gone to hell.
Six traffic lights and seven cops and all the streets kept clean.
The supermarket and the drug store and the bars all doing well.”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

What Made America Famous?
Song lyrics, Verities & Balderdash (1974)

Hell , Light

“I object to background music no matter how good it is. Composers want people to listen to their music, they don't want them doing something else while their music is on. I'd like to get the guy who sold all those big businessmen the idea of putting music in the elevators, for he was really clever. What on earth good does it do anybody to hear those four or eight bars while going up a few flights.”

Aaron Copland (1900–1990) American composer, composition teacher, writer, and conductor

Quoted in Classic Essays on Twentieth-Century Music, ISBN 0028645812.

People , Music , Guy , Idea

“Do they lie? Fervently. Do they steal? Only silver and gold. Do they remember? I am in constant touch. Hardly a day passes. The children. Some can’t spell, still. Took a walk in the light-manufacturing district, where everything’s been converted. Lots of little shops, wine bars. Saw some strange things. Saw a group of square steel plates arranged on a floor. Very interesting. Saw a Man Mountain Dean dressed in heavenly blue. Wild, chewing children. They were small. Petite. Out of scale. They came and went. Doors banging. They were of different sexes but wore similar clothes. Wandered away, then they wandered back. They’re vague, you know, they tell you things in a vague way. Asked me to leave, said they’d had enough. Enough what? I asked. Enough of my lip, they said. Although the truth was that I had visited upon them only the palest of apothegms—the one about the salt losing its savor, the one about the fowls of the air.”

Donald Barthelme book Sixty Stories

“Aria”.
Sixty Stories (1981)

Children , Truth , Lie , Sex

“Anyway I be, holding this mic
And I'm restless
Lyrical bars, it comes quick like my first sex
I'm raw, no latex
I aint a slave, I'm a grown man
Fvck the chains and the necklace
Gat bad chicks everywhere, Casablanca
Noah flow, leave you in a state like Bayelsa
I poo in your mouth, you can talk that shyt
Guns like a cinema, it got clips”

Slim Burna (1988) Nigerian singer and record producer

"Real Recognize Real" (track 10)
I'm On Fire (2013)

Sex

“We put things in order — God does the rest. Lay an iron bar east and west, it is not magnetized. Lay it north and south and it is.”

Horace Mann (1796–1859) American politician

As quoted in A Dictionary of Thoughts : Being a Cyclopedia of Laconic Quotations from the Best Authors of the World, both Ancient and Modern (1908) edited by Tryon Edwards

God

“Tell me why the caged bird nutters against its prison bars, and I will tell you why the soul sickens of earthliness. The bird has wings, and wings were made to cleave the air, and soar in freedom in the sun. The soul is immortal — it cannot feed upon husks.”

Randolph Sinks Foster (1820–1903) American bishop

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 338.

Soul , Bird , Freedom , Sun

“I'm drinking Jack and I started blacking out. You ever black out? Or as I call it, time travel? You ever do that? Oh yeah! You know how it is -- you're drinking, you black out. You wake up, you're in another bar. You're drinking, you black out. You wake up, you're playing that knife game with a half-Indian somewhere in North Dakota, "Yeah! Yeah! Winner fixes the tranny! Yeah". You're drinking, you black out. You wake up, you're in White Castle -- working there 3 years, STILL not assistant manager. Your buddies tell you to quit, but you can't 'cause you're banging the slow girl on the fry-o-later. They say she's a little retarded, but those titties ain't retarded!”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Dave Attell

Travel , Girl , Game , Drink

“So it's home again, and home again, America for me!
My heart is turning home again, and there I long to be,
In the land of youth and freedom beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars!”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

America for Me http://www.potw.org/archive/potw308.html, st. 2 (1909)

Youth , Home , Star , Freedom

“If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds.”

Lois McMaster Bujold (1949) Science Fiction and fantasy author from the USA

Source: World of the Five Gods series, The Curse of Chalion (2000), p. 58

Hope

“Only one marriage I regret. I remember after I got that marriage license I went across from the license bureau to a bar for a drink. The bartender said, "What will you have, sir?"”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

And I said, "A glass of hemlock."
Pt. 2, Ch. 5
Papa Hemingway (1966)

Marriage , Drink

“I further recommend that provision be made for the appointment of a commission, to consist of two or three members of the Federal judiciary and as many members of the bar, to examine the present criminal code of procedure and recommend to the Congress measures which may reform and expedite court procedure in the administration and enforcement of our criminal laws.”

Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933) American politician, 30th president of the United States (in office from 1923 to 1929)

1920s, Second State of the Union Address (1924)

Law

“Indeed, if what you do offends me but does not harm me otherwise, there should be a very high bar for prohibiting your act. After all, any ban, and certainly any vigilante acts to enforce it, may offend you as much, or more, than the offence to me. Excessive political correctness stifles progress as much as excessive license and disrespect.”

Raghuram G. Rajan (1963) Indian economist

On excessive political correctness and bans, as quoted in " Hasty bans hinder progress: Raghuram Rajan http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/hasty-bans-hinder-progress-raghuram-rajan/article7827092.ece", The Hindu (31 October 2015)

“Animals, these beings trapped
As I am trapped but not, themselves, the trap,
Aging, but without knowledge of their age,
Kept safe here, knowing not of death, for death
— Oh, bars of my own body, open, open!The world goes by my cage and never sees me.”

Randall Jarrell (1914–1965) poet, critic, novelist, essayist

"The Woman at the Washington Zoo," lines 14-19
The Woman at the Washington Zoo (1960)

Death , Age , World , Knowledge

“I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.”

Daniel J. Boorstin (1914–2004) American historian

As quoted in Wall Street Journal (31 December 1985) on why he did his writing at home very early in the morning while he served as the Librarian of Congress.

Thinking

“Then I learned to play some lead guitar, I was underage in this funky bar
And I stepped outside to smoke myself a j
When I came back to the room, everybody just seemed to move
And I turned my amp up loud and I began to play.”

Paul Simon (1941) American musician, songwriter and producer

Late in the Evening
Song lyrics, One-Trick Pony (1980)

Learning

“No one was allowed to leave the theatre during his recitals, however pressing the reason. We read of women in the audience giving birth, and of men being so bored with listening and applauding that they furtively dropped down from the wall at the rear, since the gates were kept barred, or shammed dead and were carried away for burial.”
Cantante eo ne necessaria quidem causa excedere theatro licitum est. Itaque et enixae quaedam in spectaculis dicuntur et multi taedio audendi laudandique clausis oppidorum portis aut furtim desiluisse de muro aut morte simulata funere elati.

Sueton book The Twelve Caesars

Of Nero's public performances in musical competitions.
Source: The Twelve Caesars, Nero, Ch. 23

Women , Men , Birth , Reading

“Prestige bars any serious attack on power. Do people attack a thing they consider with awe?”

George Jackson (activist) (1941–1971) activist, Marxist, author, member of the Black Panther Party, and co-founder of the Black Guerrilla Family

Source: Blood in My Eye (1971), p. 50

People

“Without the music to shout over, few people bothered saying anything." (Remarking on a power cut while in a bar in the Dominican Republic)”

Mark Kurlansky (1948) American journalist

A Continent of Islands" (1992).

People , Music

“Being a living legend is such a precarious livelihood. It’s like being a bar of soap in a shower which doesn’t have any water in it.”

John Cale (1942) Welsh composer, singer-songwriter and record producer

Attributed without citation at John Cale - Quotes, xs4all.nl, 16 November 2012 http://werksman.home.xs4all.nl/cale/quotes/index.html,

Water

“Every time I know we have to go out on tour, there’s about three or four weeks where I’m terrified—where I start thinking: That’s not me. I’m not Freddie Mercury. Then I go out onstage and it’s like diving into the cold Puget Sound after spending five weeks in Hawaii—there’s a shock to the system, but the fear goes away. You get used to it, which is pretty cool, because if I stopped performing, I could just disappear and end up being some weird chattering man that walks the streets in rags, staring only at the pavement. At first you rationalize that going to a club where people recognize you is a bad idea; then going to a neighborhood bar becomes a bad idea, too. Going to the grocery store becomes a bad idea. Answering the phone becomes a bad idea. Then every time the dog barks, you think the National Guard is on your roof ready to drill holes in the shingles and shoot at you. So I have to deal with the outside world on sort of a maintenance level—go out to a bar every so often and just be around people.”

Chris Cornell (1964–2017) American singer-songwriter, musician

On being anti-social

People , World , Fear , Dogs

“[Speaking about women’s friendships] If two women go to a bar and they are fighting over men, it makes it much easier for the men. If two women are very close and they act as… it makes it very difficult for the men to pull one over on anybody.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Interview in Stumped Magazine (February 2002) http://stumpedmagazine.com/interviews/jennifer-beals-transcript.html.

Women , Men , Friendship , Fight

“Gentleness, Virtue, Wisdom, and Endurance,
These are the seals of that most firm assurance
Which bars the pit over Destruction’s strength;
And if, with infirm hand, Eternity,
Mother of many acts and hours, should free
The serpent that would clasp her with his length;
These are the spells by which to reassume
An empire o’er the disentangled doom.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley Prometheus Unbound

Demogorgon, Act IV, l. 562–569
Prometheus Unbound (1818–1819; publ. 1820)

Wisdom

“The term "chorus form" is often used to denote a type of performance - typically in jazz or rhythm 'n' blues, but also sometimes in country music and rock 'n' roll - where a given structural unit is repeated an indefinite number of times. The unit itself may be sectionally elaborate, as in the case of most Tin Pan Alley ballads. It may be twelve-bar blues, or something similar, as in the case of many R&B and rock 'n' roll numbers: here, a three-line AAB lyric, set to a three-phrase melody, is underpinned by a single gestural sweep in the harmony. Occasionally - as in some funk, dub reggae, and hip-hop, for example - it may approach the status of open-ended process.”

Richard Middleton British musicologist

[Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture, ISBN 0631212639, Middleton, Richard, 1999]

Music , Time , Country

“If I went to the pub lunch and cleared my head with a pint surely there would be an insight, a flash of inspiration. Surely. My money went over the bar. The pint came back. Nothing else.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

Money

“I used to do Grade Exams, but my mum will tell you I didn't over-practise for them at all. I never practised, just played. I loved to play. I loved to play a lot* If one mistake is made with young children, it is trying to make them practise rather than just letting them play.' She played hymns at church ('My parents were very religious when we were young') and 'all the Top of the Pops number ones next morning at school. Things like David Bowie's "Life On Mars". That's got a very good piano part. And ever since I was six or seven years old, I always liked Bach - that's why I recorded the Anna Magdalene Notebook, little 16-bar preludes that Bach wrote for children.' I was amazed at how serious the other kids were about the whole thing, much more disciplined than I was, and with this attitude of "Ooh, I can't play sports because I might hurt my fingers" or "I can't listen to pop music because that's really terrible.”

Joanna MacGregor (1959) British musician

Childhood

Love , Life , Children , School

“The first grand design of Christ Jesus is to destroy and consume His mortal enemy antichrist. This must be done by the breath of His mouth in His prophets and witnesses. Now, the nations of the world have impiously stopped this heavenly breath and stifled the Lord Jesus in His servants. Now, it shall please the civil state to remove the state bars set up to resist the holy spirit of God in His servants (whom yet finally to resist is not in all the powers of the world), I humbly conceive that the civil state has made a fair progress in promoting the Gospel of Jesus Christ.”

Roger Williams (theologian) (1603–1684) English Protestant theologian and founder of the colony of Providence Plantation

The Hireling Ministry, None of Christ's (1652)

God , World , Christ

“"I don't believe this!" Peter said. "Why is it respectable not to know how to do things? Is it respectable to light a fire with a bar of soap?"
"That," Charmain said haughtily, "was an accident."”

Diana Wynne Jones (1934–2011) English children's fantasy writer

Source: Castle Series, House of Many Ways (2008), p. 109.

Light

“I was in a bar a few nights ago, moving from stool to stool, trying to get lucky… But there was no gum under any of them. And I hear giggling behind me. At first I don't mind, but the giggling continues… Finally, I thought "What's so amusing?" I turn around, and these two guys, for the last, oh, half hour or so, have been throwing darts into my head. It's a good thing I heard them! I said, "Look, you bums," 'cause I was angry now, "As soon as this game is over, hit the road!"”

Emo Philips (1956) American comedian

But as I left that bar, one thing stuck in my mind...
E=MO² (1985)

Guy , Game , Night

“He took their facts for granted. He knew no more than a firefly about rays — or about race or sex — or ennui — or a bar of music — or a pang of love — or a grain of musk — or of phosphorus — or conscience — or duty — or the force of Euclidian geometry — or non-Euclidian — or heat — or light — or osmosis — or electrolysis — or the magnet — or ether — or vis inertiae — or gravitation — or cohesion — or elasticity — or surface tension — or capillary attraction — or Brownian motion — or of some scores, or thousands, or millions of chemical attractions, repulsions or indifferences which were busy within and without him; or, in brief, of Force itself, which, he was credibly informed, bore some dozen definitions in the textbooks, mostly contradictory, and all, as he was assured, beyond his intelligence.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Love , Music , Sex , Intelligence

“I'm not sure I'd want to pick the brain of any author. Some writers have a lot to say about what they write and why they write it. Others don't. I've met a lot of writers who have an awful lot to say in the bar, but whose books seem curiously empty.”

Michael Marshall Smith (1965) British novelist, screenwriter and short story writer

Associated Content Interview (October 23, 2006)

Books

“I was in a sushi bar over a year ago, and it was just one of those moments that it dawned on me — it hit me over the head — how could I just discriminate between a cow [and] a fish? Both had a consciousness, and what right did I have to discriminate between the two?”

Carré Otis (1968) American actress and model

About her vegetarianism, launching PETA's campaign " Try to Relate to Who’s on Your Plate https://www.peta.org/media/psa/type/print/?category_name=vegan#foobox-1/70/otis_try_to_relate.jpg?20151027075109". Quoted in Tales from the Left Coast: True Stories of Hollywood Stars and Their Outrageous Politics by Hirsen James (Crown Publishing Group, 2003), p. 139 https://books.google.it/books?id=7Q3QE-n8q4UC&pg=PA139.

Fish

“(Man in bar) I have the right to bear arms. It's in the Constitution. (Sylvia) I'm in complete agreement. I'd like to see a lot more women carry guns. [Pause] Cat got your tongue?”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 9

Women , Cats

“If you wear black, then kindly, irritating strangers will touch your arm consolingly and inform you that the world keeps on turning.
They're right. It does.
However much you beg it to stop.
It turns and lets grenadine spill over the horizon, sends hard bars of gold through my window and I wake up and feel happy for three seconds and then I remember.
It turns and tips people out of their beds and into their cars, their offices, an avalanche of tiny men and women tumbling through life…
All trying not to think about what's waiting at the bottom.
Sometimes it turns and sends us reeling into each other's arms. We cling tight, excited and laughing, strangers thrown together on a moving funhouse floor.
Intoxicated by the motion we forget all the risks.
And then the world turns…
And somebody falls off…
And oh God it's such a long way down.
Numb with shock, we can only stand and watch as they fall away from us, gradually getting smaller…
Receding in our memories until they're no longer visible.
We gather in cemeteries, tense and silent as if for listening for the impact; the splash of a pebble dropped into a dark well, trying to measure its depth.
Trying to measure how far we have to fall.
No impact comes; no splash. The moment passes. The world turns and we turn away, getting on with our lives…
Wrapping ourselves in comforting banalities to keep us warm against the cold.
"Time's a great healer."
"At least it was quick.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

"The world keeps turning.
Oh Alec—
Alec's dead."
Swamp Thing (1983–1987)

Life , Women , Men , God

“I assumed that some of the gold bars I received were melted gold teeth.”

Oswald Pohl (1892–1951) Head of the SS Wirtschafts-Verwaltungshauptamt

To Leon Goldensohn, June 5, 1946, from "The Nuremberg Interviews" by Leon Goldensohn, Robert Gellately - History - 2004.
"The Nuremberg Interviews"

“Ascending modern rationalism, in its speculative as well as empirical form, shows a striking contrast between extreme critical radicalism in scientific and philosophic method on the one hand, and an uncritical quietism in the attitude toward established and functioning social institutions. Thus Descartes' ego cogitans was to leave the “great public bodies” untouched, and Hobbes held that “the present ought always to be preferred, maintained, and accounted best.” Kant agreed with Locke in justifying revolution if and when it has succeeded in organizing the whole and in preventing subversion. However, these accommodating concepts of Reason were always contradicted by the evident misery and injustice of the “great public bodies” and the effective, more or less conscious rebellion against them. Societal conditions existed which provoked and permitted real dissociation. from the established state of affairs; a private as well as political dimension was present in which dissociation could develop into effective opposition, testing its strength and the validity of its objectives. With the gradual closing of this dimension by the society, the self-limitation of thought assumes a larger significance. The interrelation between scientific-philosophical and societal processes, between theoretical and practical Reason, asserts itself "behind the back” of the scientists and philosophers. The society bars a whole type of oppositional operations and behavior; consequently, the concepts pertaining to them are rendered illusory or meaningless. Historical transcendence appears as metaphysical transcendence, not acceptable to science and scientific thought. The operational and behavioral point of view, practiced as a “habit of thought” at large, becomes the view of the established universe of discourse and action, needs and aspirations. The “cunning of Reason” works, as it so often did, in the interest of the powers that be. The insistence on operational and behavioral concepts turns against the efforts to free thought and behavior from the given reality and for the suppressed alternatives.”

Herbert Marcuse book One-Dimensional Man

Source: One-Dimensional Man (1964), pp. 15-16

Behavior , Reality , Effort , Universe

“We must also sympathize with the Whites in Kenya Colony in their opposition to a filling of their country with cheap Hindu labor. As Americans we can understand the Negro and recognize his cheerful qualities, but we can have little sympathy with the Hindu whom we have expressly barred from our Pacific Coast. These Hindus, with the Chinese, have ruined the native races of many of the Polynesian Islands. They have been for ages in contact with the highest civilizations, but have failed to benefit by such contact, either physically, intellectually, or morally.”

Madison Grant (1865–1937) American lawyer, eugenicist, and conservationist

The Conquest of a Continent (1933)

Age , Understanding , Country

“Truth-tellers are not always palatable.
There is a preference for candy bars.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

Gottschalk and the Grande Tarantelle (1988)

Truth

“Faith is the backbone of the social and the foundation of the commercial fabric; remove faith between man and man, and society and commerce fall to pieces. There is not a happy home on earth but stands on faith; our heads are pillowed on it, we sleep at night in its arms with greater security for the safety of our lives, peace, and prosperity than bolts and bars can give.”

Thomas Guthrie (1803–1873) British divine

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 218.

Peace , Faith , Home , Sleep

“The soft seduction of consumer global capitalism reduce the nations of the West to a rootless mass of Americanised consumers, without identity, without pride and without a future. Children identify with the grotesque and vulgar instead of noble heroes and beautiful princesses in castles. Teenagers ape the antics of degenerate pop-stars whose example leads hundreds of thousands into the living death of drug addiction, not to mention the tragedy of the image conscious girls (mainly) who feel compelled to starve themselves to get "the look" and of course the spiralling number of abortions. Adults perform meaningless jobs, in conditions of mind-destroying boredom, to earn enough money to buy the latest needlessly created want to be pushed on television as the thing without which their neighbours will regard them as worthless failures. Old folk die unnoticed and lie rotting for weeks, even months, in barred and bolted flats in inhuman tower blocks, unofficial prisons which become tombs for those who no longer have any economic value. Do not be fooled by the glossy packaging of the consumer society. Where state socialism was a creed of terror and stagnation, capitalism is one of apathy and death.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

Nick Griffin, The Deadly Twins.

Death , Money , Children , Lie

“Adults constantly raise the bar on smart children, precisely because they're able to handle it. The children get overwhelmed by the tasks in front of them and gradually lose the sort of openness and sense of accomplishment they innately have. When they're treated like that, children start to crawl inside a shell and keep everything inside. It takes a lot of time and effort to get them to open up again. Kid's hearts are malleable, but once they gel it's hard to get them back the way they were. Next to impossible, in most cases.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore (2002), Chapter 12

Children , Way , Sense , Effort

“What held him back all day was the feeling that somewhere there was something better for him than listening to babies cry and cheating people in used-car lots and it's this feeling he tries to kill, right there on the bus; he grips the chrome bar and leans far over two women with white pleated blouses and laps of packages and closes his eyes and tries to kill it.”

John Updike book Rabbit, Run

Rabbit, Run (1960)

Women , People , Cars , Feeling

“Now, the smoke fills the air
In this honky-tonk bar.
And I'm thinking 'bout where I'd rather be.
But I burned all my bridges;
I sank all my ships.
And I'm stranded at the edge of the sea.”

James Taylor (1948) American singer-songwriter and guitarist

"Bartender's Blues"
Song lyrics, JT (1977)

Thinking , Sea

“In Germany I ingested the entire contents of the hotel mini-bar before a show and stuck my fingers in this guy's nostrils because I thought they would fit.”

Grace Slick (1939) American musician, writer and painter

On this incident Paul Kantner remarked: "I remember one night in Germany she spotted a guy picking his nose and she jumped on the guys lap and picked his nose. Half of the audience was grossed out, the other half thought it was great. Hey, half isn't bad!"
Somebody to Love? (1998)

Guy

“As for the White House, all the boy's family had lived there, and, barring the eight years of Andrew Jackson's reign, had been more or less at home there ever since it was built. The boy half thought he owned it, and took for granted that he should some day live in it. He felt no sensation whatever before Presidents. A President was a matter of course in every respectable family; he had two in his own; three, if he counted old Nathaniel Gorham, who, was the oldest and first in distinction. Revolutionary patriots, or perhaps a Colonial Governor, might be worth talking about, but any one could be President, and some very shady characters were likely to be. Presidents, Senators, Congressmen, and such things were swarming in every street.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Family , Home , Boy , Housing

“That's always the hardest question. Lately I've been listening to Derek and the Dominos, the Bar-Kays. I really like the first Patti Smith. I'm just starting to discover the Cure. I keep trying to find things to open myself up to. I enjoy Soundgarden. The singer [Chris Cornell] just buries me. The guy sings so great. On the club circuit, I like Saigon Saloon a lot.”

Axl Rose (1962) American singer-songwriter and musician

Guy , Question , Singing

“I can understand the ignorant masses loving to soak themselves in drink—oh, yes, it's very shocking that they should, of course—very shocking to us who live in cozy homes, with all the graces and pleasures of life around us, that the dwellers in damp cellars and windy attics should creep from their dens of misery into the warmth and glare of the public-house bar, and seek to float for a brief space away from their dull world upon a Lethe stream of gin. But think, before you hold up your hands in horror at their ill-living, what "life" for these wretched creatures really means. Picture the squalid misery of their brutish existence, dragged on from year to year in the narrow, noisome room where, huddled like vermin in sewers, they welter, and sicken, and sleep; where dirt-grimed children scream and fight and sluttish, shrill-voiced women cuff, and curse, and nag; where the street outside teems with roaring filth and the house around is a bedlam of riot and stench. Think what a sapless stick this fair flower of life must be to them, devoid of mind and soul. The horse in his stall scents the sweet hay and munches the ripe corn contentedly. The watch-dog in his kennel blinks at the grateful sun, dreams of a glorious chase over the dewy fields, and wakes with a yelp of gladness to greet a caressing hand. But the clod-like life of these human logs never knows one ray of light. From the hour when they crawl from their comfortless bed to the hour when they lounge back into it again they never live one moment of real life. Recreation, amusement, companionship, they know not the meaning of. Joy, sorrow, laughter, tears, love, friendship, longing, despair, are idle words to them. From the day when their baby eyes first look out upon their sordid world to the day when, with an oath, they close them forever and their bones are shoveled out of sight, they never warm to one touch of human sympathy, never thrill to a single thought, never start to a single hope. In the name of the God of mercy; let them pour the maddening liquor down their throats and feel for one brief moment that they live!”

Jerome K. Jerome book Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow

Idle Thoughts of an Idle Fellow (1886)

Love , Life , Women , God

“Anyone seen Kaka's wife? Funnily enough, she's a complete sort. She's the sort of woman who, if she looked you in the eye in a bar and asked you where the fag machine was, you'd start giggling and snort.”

Ben Dirs journalist

Quotes of the Week, 2007-05-09, BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/solpda/ifs_sport/hi/newsid_6635000/6635253.stm,
Football Commentary

“As far as dreams were concerned—well dreams are generated by the random processes of neural oscillation during the brain’s rest phases. What dreams do is cycle and recycle images and feelings, rationalisations and fears. There’s nothing special about that. It’s not the dreams that matter (chaff, mental turbulence, the rotating metal bars moving endlessly through the transparent tub of metaphorical slushy). It is what the problem-solving circuits in the mind make of the dreams. Dreams iterate and test mental schemas, discarding the maladaptive to return the adaptive to the slush to be reworked. Dreams are emotional preparations for solving problems—that is why we have evolved them, because problem-solving abilities are highly adaptive and thus strongly evolutionarily selected. Dreams intoxicate the individual out of reliance on common sense and preconception, and tempt her into the orbit of private logic. Dreams have utility.”

Adam Roberts book Jack Glass: The Story of a Murderer

Part 2, Chapter 3, “The Utility of Dreaming” (p. 119).
Jack Glass (2012)

Fear , Dreams , Feeling , Problem

“Mathematicians themselves set up standards of generality and elegance in their exposition which are a bar to understand.”

Kenneth E. Boulding (1910–1993) British-American economist

Source: 1940s, Economic Analysis, 1941, p. 236 (rev. ed. 1948) cited in: G.C. Harcourt, C. Sardoni (1992) On Political Economists and Modern Political Economy. Vol 4. p. 197

Understanding

“It was a yellow voice, a high, shrill treble in the nursery
White always and high, I remember it so,
White cupboard, off-white table, mugs, dolls’ faces
And I was four or five. The garden could have been
Miles away. We were taken down to the green
Asparagus beds, the cut lawn, and the smell of it
Comes each summer after rain when white returns. Our bird,
A canary called Peter, sang behind bars. The black and white cat
Curled and snoozed by the fire and danger was far away.”

Elizabeth Jennings (1926–2001) poet

" A Bird in the House" in Collected Poems (Carcanet, 1987)

Cats , Bird , Summer

“Anybody can be a bum; all it takes is the right girl, the right bar and the right friends, and you are well… your buddies will see you off. They'll christen your dumpster for you.”

Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American comedian

Dangerous (1990)

Girl

“I like vending machines 'cause snacks are better when they fall. If I buy a candy bar at a store, oftentimes, I will drop it… So that it achieves its maximum flavor potential.”

Mitch Hedberg (1968–2005) American stand-up comedian

Strategic Grill Locations

“Oh, it’s home again, and home again, America for me!
I want a ship that’s westward bound to plow the rolling sea,
To the blessed Land of Room Enough beyond the ocean bars,
Where the air is full of sunlight and the flag is full of stars.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Source: America for Me (1909), Lines 21-24.

Home , Star , Sea

“In so far as gaining citizenship rights and opportunities for the unfettered development of the African people, who will deny that thirty years of my life have been spent knocking in vain, patiently, moderately and modestly at a closed and barred door?”

Albert Lutuli (1898–1967) South African politician

The Road to Freedom is via the Cross (1952)

Life , People

“In early 1981 one of the most important moments in my life occurred. I entered a vivisection lab … In one of the cages, I saw a young Alaskan malamute … The dog tried to lick my face through the bars. Maybe he thought I had come to save him. I saw the infected stitches in the belly, oozing pus and blood. I saw the filthy, encrusted tube that was draining fluid out of his stomach. And as I held him, I saw the rotted stitches start to come apart and his guts start to spill out. As gently as I could, I let him down onto the floor of the cage and placed my hand on him, trying to comfort him in those last few moments of his life. I was still holding him when at last he took his final struggling breaths and died. It seemed to take a lifetime. I was close to tears as I looked at the body, and I thought, this isn’t science — this is madness. Standing there, looking at that gentle animal lying dead in a bloody cage, I made a promise to him and to myself, that I would never forget him, that I would keep on fighting vivisection until it was ended.”

Chris DeRose (1948) American actor and activist

"Chris DeRose: Vegan Easy Challenge Ambassador", interview with VeganEasy.org (2011) https://web.archive.org/web/20111012130026/http://veganeasy.org/Chris-DeRose.

Life , Dogs , Lying , Tear

“I believe that it is an honor beyond measure that Bar Ilan University and the Rennert Center would deem it proper to cast me among the ranks of our greatest defenders and champions. I know I do not deserve this distinction. I certainly do not believe that I have earned it. But I do know that since childhood I have strived to emulate the image of the watchman-or watchwoman-on the walls of Zion. And I pledge that I will continue throughout my life to strive to earn the distinction you bestow on me tonight.”

Caroline Glick (1969) deputy managing editor of the Jerusalem Post

Reprinted in [Bitton-Jackson, Livia, Caroline B. Glick: Woman of Valor - A Shackled Warrior, http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/38244, The Jewish Press, February 18, 2009]
At the presentation for her Guardian of Zion Award from the Ingeborg Rennert Center for Jerusalem Studies at Bar Ilan University where she delivered the keynote speech. (May 31, 2009)

Life , Universe , Childhood

“When I had a big band in the late 1960s, though, Warne and I were working quite a lot together. Warne would be turning time around, and dealing with cross-the-bar structures, and starting phrases in odd places—his intuition was really far out! He was one of the greatest players ever.”

Clare Fischer (1928–2012) American keyboardist, composer, arranger, and bandleader

As quoted in Lee Konitz: Conversations on the Improviser's Art https://books.google.com/books?id=pc4CsgVHLw0C&pg=PA65&dq=%22When+I+had+a+big+band+in+the+late+1960s,+though%22&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBoQ6AEwAGoVChMIhfLixv_OxwIVBTU-Ch1hfAOh#v=onepage&q=%22When%20I%20had%20a%20big%20band%20in%20the%20late%201960s%2C%20though%22&f=false

Time

“Music, also, the architect ought to understand so that he may have knowledge of the canonical and mathematical theory, and besides be able to tune ballistae, catapultae, and scorpiones to the proper key. For to the right and left in the beams are the holes in the frames through which the strings of twisted sinew are stretched by means of windlasses and bars, and these strings must not be clamped and made fast until they give the same correct note to the ear of the skilled workman.”

Vitruvius book De architectura

Source: De architectura (The Ten Books On Architecture) (~ 15BC), Book I, Chapter I, Sec. 8

Music , Mathematics , Understanding , Knowledge

“One of the century’s most famous intellectual pronouncements comes at the beginning of The Myth of Sisyphus: “There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide. Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.” Reading this for the first time I was puzzled and continued to be throughout much of the essay, since despite the work’s persuasive logic and eloquence there was a lot that eluded me, and I always came back to grapple vainly with the initial hypothesis, unable to deal with the premise that anyone should come close to wishing to kill himself in the first place. A later short novel, The Fall, I admired with reservations; the guilt and self-condemnation of the lawyer-narrator, gloomily spinning out his monologue in an Amsterdam bar, seemed a touch clamorous and excessive, but at the time of my reading I was unable to perceive that the lawyer was behaving very much like a man in the throes of clinical depression. Such was my innocence of the very existence of this disease.”

William Styron book Darkness Visible

Source: Darkness Visible (1990), II

Life , Disease , Question , Problem

“I do not propose to say many words tonight. The time has come when action rather than speech is required. Eighteen months ago in this House I prayed that the responsibility might not fall upon me to ask this country to accept the awful arbitrament of war. I fear that I may not be able to avoid that responsibility. But, at any rate, I cannot wish for conditions in which such a burden should fall upon me in which I should feel clearer than I do to-day as to where my duty lies…We shall stand at the bar of history knowing that the responsibility for this terrible catastrophe lies on the shoulders of one man—the German Chancellor, who has not hesitated to plunge the world into misery in order to serve his own senseless ambitions.”

Neville Chamberlain (1869–1940) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1939/sep/01/british-note-to-germany in the House of Commons (1 September 1939) on the British ultimatum to Germany
Prime Minister

War , World , Fear , Feeling

“The doors will be forever barred and bolted against those miserable Democrats who scoff the rights of man.”

Owen Lovejoy (1811–1864) American politician

As quoted in His Brother's Blood: Speeches and Writings, 1838–64 https://books.google.com/books?id=qMEv8DNXVbIC&pg=PA241 (2004), edited by William Frederick Moore and Jane Ann Moore, p. 241
1860s, Speech (October 1860)

“The First Amendment expresses our Nation’s fundamental commitment to religious liberty by means of two provisions–one protecting the free exercise of religion, the other barring establishment of religion. They were written by the descendents of people who had come to this land precisely so that they could practice their religion freely. Together with the other First Amendment guarantees–of free speech, a free press, and the rights to assemble and petition–the Religion Clauses were designed to safeguard the freedom of conscience and belief that those immigrants had sought. They embody an idea that was once considered radical: Free people are entitled to free and diverse thoughts, which government ought neither to constrain nor to direct.”

Sandra Day O'Connor (1930) Former Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States

McCreary County v. American Civil Liberties Union, 545 U.S. 844 (2005) (concurring).

People , Religion , Exercises , Idea

“There was a great director who directed a picture that I wrote who barred me from the set— quite appropriately— and said, “I’m sorry, Jim. When you’re directing, you don’t need to know everything. You need the illusion that you do.” And, you know, and I WOULD be there— behind him trying to signal the actors in, you know, in a way I wasn’t even aware of.”

James L. Brooks (1940) American director, producer and screenwriter

In the documentary Dreams on Spec

Way

“I found myself going over a particular troublesome scene in the novel, for the one thousand and seventy-third time, in the manner of a lunatic ape in a cage at the zoo, running his fingers back and forth along the iron bars of his home.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Home , Time

“His musical inspiration operates in a world uncluttered by conventional bar lines, conventional chord changes, and conventional ways of blowing or fingering a saxophone. Such practical 'limitations' did not even have to be overcome in his music; they somehow never existed for him. Despite this--or more accurately, because of this--his playing has a deep inner logic. Not an obvious surface logic, it is based on subtleties of reaction, subtleties of timing and color that are, I think, quite new to jazz--at least they have never appeared in so pure and direct a form.”

Ornette Coleman (1930–2015) American jazz musician

Gunther Schuller, quoted in [All American Music: Composition in the Late Twentieth Century, 1983, Rockwell, John, New York, Alfred A. Knopf, ISBN 0394511638].
About

World , Music , Color , Way

“Standing on my watch-tower I am commanded, if I see aught of evil coming, to give warning. I solemnly declare that I do discern evil approaching; I see a storm collecting in the heavens; I discover the commotion of the troubled elements; I hear the roar of a distant wind — heaven and earth seem mingled in the conflict — and I cry to those for whom I watch, "A storm! A storm! Get you into the ark or you are swept away. "Oh! what is it I see? I see a world convulsed and falling to ruins — the sea burning like oil — nations rising from under ground — the sun falling — the damned in chains before the bar, and some of my poor hearers among them! I see them cast from the battlements of the judgment scene. My God! the eternal pit has closed upon them forever!”

Edward Dorr Griffin (1770–1837) American academic administrator

Sermons, vol. II (1839), sermon XXXIX: "The Watchman".

God , World , Distant , Evil

“(Man in bar) The kind of woman I want just isn't around anymore. (Sylvia) Perhaps if you wait for a full moon.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 24

Waiting

“Boston State-house is the hub of the solar system. You couldn't pry that out of a Boston man if you had the tire of all creation straightened out for a crow-bar.”

Oliver Wendell Holmes (1809–1894) Poet, essayist, physician

The Autocrat of the Breakfast Table (1858)

Housing

“The nineteenth century moved fast and furious, so that one who moved in it felt sometimes giddy, watching it spin; but the eleventh moved faster and more furiously still. The Norman conquest of England was an immense effort, and its consequences were far-reaching, but the first crusade was altogether the most interesting event in European history. Never has the western world shown anything like the energy and unity with which she then flung herself on the East, and for the moment made the East recoil. Barring her family quarrels, Europe was a unity then, in thought, will and object. Christianity was the unit.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

Mont Saint Michel and Chartres (1904)

World , Family , History , Effort

“I do not know how far I ought to sit here and suffer a gentleman at the bar to bring forward parts of the Bible in this way. It is for you, gentlemen of the jury, to say whether you wish to hear them read.”

Lloyd Kenyon, 1st Baron Kenyon (1732–1802) British Baron

Williams' Case (1797), 26 How. St. Tr. 683.

Way , Suffering , Reading , Parting

“I find it remarkable that some groups say “We don’t support ISIL” as if that alone proves their anti-extremist credentials. And let’s be clear Al-Qaeda don’t support ISIL. So we can’t let the bar sink to that level. Condemning a mass-murdering, child-raping organisation cannot be enough to prove you’re challenging the extremists.”

David Cameron (1966) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

2010s, 2015, Speech on (20 July 2015)

Support

“The power is ours to make or mar
Our fate as on the earliest morn,
The Darkness and the Radiance are
Creatures within the spirit born.
Yet, bathed in gloom too long, we might
Forget how we imagined light.
Not yet are fixed the prison bars:
The hidden light the spirit owns
If blown to flame would dim the stars
And they who rule them from their thrones:
And the proud sceptred spirits thence
Would bow to pay us reverence.”

George William Russell (1867–1935) Irish writer, editor, critic, poet, and artistic painter

By Still Waters (1906)

Fate , Imagination , Star , Light

“Alike were they free from
Fear, that reigns with the tyrant, and envy, the vice of republics.
Neither locks had they to their doors, nor bars to their windows;
But their dwellings were open as day and the hearts of their owners;
There the richest was poor, and the poorest lived in abundance.”

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie

Part I, section 1.
Evangeline: A Tale of Acadie (1847)

Fear , Heart , Envy

“To paint is to destroy what preceded. I never try to make a painting, but a chunk of life. It is a scream; it is a night; it is like a child; it is a tiger behind bars.”

Karel Appel (1921–2006) Dutch painter, sculptor, and poet

Karel Appel's excerpt', c. 1953

Life , Painting , Night

“With an effort Ewing turned his gaze away from the far end of the bar. Slowly he spread out his hands on the table and examined them. Then he looked up at Wayne. His left eyelid had begun to quiver slightly like a leaf in a gentle breeze as he put the question, but the expression of his face remained unchanged. "Who's the new customer?"”

Robin Maugham (1916–1981) British novelist, playwright and travel writer

Ewing asked indolently.
Explicit
The Wrong People (1971)

Question , Effort

“Ireland stands at your bar expectant, hopeful, almost suppliant. Her words are the words of truth and soberness. She asks a blessed oblivion of the past, and in that oblivion our interest is deeper than even hers. …She asks also a boon for the future; and that boon for the future, unless we are much mistaken, will be a boon to us in respect of honour, no less than a boon to her in respect of happiness, prosperity, and peace. Such, Sir, is her prayer. Think, I beseech you, think well, think wisely, think, not for the moment, but for the years that are to come, before you reject this Bill.”

William Ewart Gladstone (1809–1898) British Liberal politician and prime minister of the United Kingdom

Speech https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1886/jun/07/second-reading-adjourned-debate in the House of Commons (7 June 1886) introducing the Home Rule Bill
1880s

Truth , Peace , Hope , Thinking

“In Massachusetts, where properly qualified "persons" were allowed to practice law, the Supreme Court decided that a woman was not a "person," and a special act of the legislature had to be passed before Miss Lelia Robinson could be admitted to the bar. But today women are lawyers.”

Lucy Stone (1818–1893) American abolitionist and suffragist

The Progress of Fifty Years (1893)

Women , Law , Personality

“I can't stand Paris. I hate the place. Full of people talking French, which is a thing I bar. It always seems to me so affected.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Big Money

Big Money (1931)

Hate , People

“I recalled when I worked in the woods
and the bars of Madras, Oregon.
That short-haired joy and roughness—
America—your stupidity.
I could almost love you again.”

Gary Snyder (1930) American poet

I Went into the Maverick Bar, from No Nature; New and Selected Poems (1992)

Love , Stupidity , Joy

“I don’t think, Mr. Palkhiwala, you can add anything more to what Mr. Nariman has so well presented”. These were some of the early memories in the Bombay Bar which Mr Nariman still recalls and cherish.”

Fali Sam Nariman (1929) Indian politician

When he had appeared in case on the brief of Mr. Palkhiwala.
Fali S. Nariman, ‘Before Memory Fades: An Autobiography

Thinking , Memory

“The goat thing, I went out, I was drinking some beers with the writers - writers I couldn't stand, and they didn't like me either. They were all like Harvard, Yale, and [imperious voice] 'We've been studying comedy for seven years, and…we've never been on stage, but we know comedy! Bwahahaha!' So I said 'Listen, I know this is a little out there, but what about a guy…who has Tourette's of a goat?' And these guys just stare at me like 'Man, Breuer's HIGH out of his MIND!' I said 'The more he drinks, the more he starts eating the curtains, and he gets nuts and sings karaoke at the end of the night.' And then about two weeks later, this guy came back, he's like, 'Hey, I've got an idea for that weird goat thing you were talking about.' He said 'What if he only sings 80's?' And I thought that was the DUMBEST…thing I've ever heard in my life! And then, we tried it, and now I've got people drunk out of their minds in a bar trying to 'baa' at me. [drunken voice] 'Hey, man! Yo, yo man, it's the sheep dude right here! [drunken 'baa'ing] I shouldn'ta had that hot dog, man!”

Jim Breuer (1967) American actor and comedian

Just hammered, baaing at me in the street.
Explaining the origin of Goat Boy on Mancow's Morning Madhouse
Unsourced

Life , People , Dogs , Guy

“We got winners, we got losers
Chain smokers and boozers
And we got yuppies, we got bikers
We got thirsty hitchhikers.
And the girls next door dress up like movie stars.
Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm I love this bar.We got cowboys, we got truckers
Broken-hearted fools and suckers
And we got hustlers, we got fighters
Early-birds and all-nighters
And the veterans talk about their battle scars.
Hmm hmm hmm hmm hmm I love this bar.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

I Love This Bar, written with Scotty Emerick
Song lyrics, Shock'n Y'all (2003)

Love , Fools , Girl , Star

“Most of us are aware and despairing on some level that our lives have become de-eroticized, that love and romance are not all around us but have to be hunted for with the kind of desperation that people used to bring when they went west looking for gold. But the answers that society gives us for this sexual desert are Viagra and Cialis and Levitra, products that allow us to stay hard for hours as we hump the indifferent mannequins we run into in bars. The country is lonely, self-obsessed and the individual members of the population are offered a thousand ways to improve their individual appearance and vigor. But there seems to be no solution on the horizon that anyone is offering to bring us more together, to give us the things we really need — love and acceptance and community.
We blame corporate America for this state of affairs because this ideology of individual acquisitiveness is the religion it naturally preaches. But it's our failure to come up with a competing ideology of getting along that's the real problem.”

Matt Taibbi (1970) author and journalist

"Finding Love in Electoral Politics", AlterNet (13 November 2004) http://web.archive.org/web/20041117195414/http://www.alternet.org/columnists/story/20486/

Love , People , Religion , Way

“The first half of your life is spent getting over yourself. You think you’re amazing, unique. Young people walk around going, "You know the funny thing is I was just in the kitchen but now I’m here in the bedroom, get a load of me! I just go on and on!" And that’s around the age when you meet somebody else – when you’re totally unbearable. Two young, fit, healthy attractive people in love? There’s nothing worse to look at in the world! Going around going, "I can’t believe I met you cause you’re amazing and I’m amazing and we’re surrounded by shitheads, it’s just amazing! Hey, I know this really good bar, let’s go and make it better."”

Dylan Moran (1971) Irish actor and comedian

In the second half of your life you realise how like every other hump who drew breath you really are. Except you’re MORE boring.
On young people.
What It Is (2009)

Love , Life , People , Age

“The waitress took a bar rag, and she wiped it across her eyes.
And as she spoke her voice came out as something like a sigh.
She said "I wish that I was beautiful, or that you were halfway blind.
And I wish I weren't so dog-gone fat, I wish that you were mine.
And I wish that you'd come with me, when I leave for home.
For we both know all about loneliness, and livin' all alone."”

Harry Chapin (1942–1981) American musician

Better Place to Be
Song lyrics, Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972)

Beauty , Dogs , Home , Loneliness

“There isn't any wall, however high, however wide or however big, whatever it is made from, that can bar you from achieving a better life. There isn't any wall or pit that is in front of you to stop you from achieving a future of wellbeing.”

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (1960) Former Prime Minister of Spain

Dinner speech at which Zapatero was the guest of honour, hosted by Felipe Calderón in the National Palace, Mexico City.
As President, 2007
Source: Transcripción oficial en la web de la Presidencia de México http://www.presidencia.gob.mx/prensa/discursos/?contenido=31030

Life , Future

“Recently, I was evicted of contempt of court over my online editorial about (bleep). I was sentenced to pay a $100,000 fine, or go to jail for 50 days. I believe this was the highest personal fine ever issued in Australia. Other websites, newspapers, and radio stations were not charged for similar or even more controversial material. Yet the judge attacked me for portraying myself as a scapegoat — a whipping boy — and he punished me accordingly. Now it is true, I have prior convictions. In 1987, I was fined $15,000 and jailed for exposing a paedophile priest Michael Glennon. Glennon had already been to jail for raping a 10-year-old girl, but was still running a camp for kids in country Victoria. And he was still a Catholic priest. He eventually went to jail, and he died behind bars several weeks ago. And to be honest, I feel good about that — he was an evil, evil man. I also spent five months under house arrest in 2011 for breaching court suppression orders, revealing the names of two serial sex offenders at a rally outside Victoria's Parliament House. About 4000 other people also shouted their names. That one cost me my radio job at 3AW. And I was fined and did 250 hours of community service for naming a judge who ruled that a man could not be charged for raping his wife under a 300-year-old British law. In Victoria, that law has since been changed. Now, here we go again. I have made a decision not taken lightly. On principle, I will not pay the $100,000 fine, which was due today. Instead, I'll go to jail. I'll go to jail for 50 days; to draw attention to all the suspended sentences for crimes of violence and child pornography; for the obscenely short sentences given to king hit killers; to draw attention to my campaign for a national register of convicted sex offenders. Already, 30,000 of you have signed up. I'm happy to serve just 50 days of the many years that the convicted paedophile ex-magistrate should be serving. That pervert, Simon Cooper, wasn't even put on the sex offenders register. If my going to jail draws attention to the judges and magistrates, out of touch with community expectations and your safety, then every one of my 50 days behind bars will be worth it. And so I'll go to jail.”

Derryn Hinch (1944) New Zealand–Australian media personality

Today Tonight, 16 January 2014.

People , Law , Sex , Feeling

“On the floor, and hanging on to the bar, squatted an old man, immobile as an object. His years had reduced and polished him as water does a stone or the generations of men do a sentence. He was dark, dried up, diminutive, and seemed outside time, situated in eternity.”

Jorge Luis Borges book Ficciones

"The South". Cf. "The Man on the Threshold", in The Aleph (1949)
tr. Andrew Hurley, Collected Fictions (1998)
Ficciones (1944)
Variant: On the floor, curled against the bar, lay an old man, as motionless as an object. The many years had worn him away and polished him, as a stone is worn smooth by running water or a saying is polished by generations of mankind.

Men , Water , Time