Quotes about rock
page 12

Newton Lee photo
Maximilien Robespierre photo

“I think people have to hit rock bottom to really know their faculties because they have to use those faculties to get out of that rock bottom. I really had to feel profoundly lonely to get myself out of the feeling of being profoundly lonely. But it was always there, that feeling of loneliness and existing with the absence of something that had been stripped from me.”

Terese Marie Mailhot (1983) First Nation Canadian writer, journalist, memoirist, teacher

On being hospitalized for depression in “Terese Mailhot: Truth Is My Aesthetic” https://www.guernicamag.com/terese-mailhot-truth-is-my-aesthetic/ in Guernica Magazine (2018 Mar 21)

Chris Martin photo
Chris Martin photo
J. Howard Moore photo

“In their phenomena of life the inhabitants of the earth display endless variety. They swim in the waters, soar in the skies, squeeze among the rocks, clamber among the trees, scamper over the plains, and glide among the grounds and grasses. Some are born for a summer, some for a century, and some flutter their little lives out in a day. They are black, white, blue, golden, all the colours of the spectrum. Some are wise and some are simple; some are large and some are microscopic; some live in castles and some in bluebells; some roam over continents and seas, and some doze their little day-dream away on a single dancing leaf. But they are all the children of a commion mother and the co-tenants of a common world. Why they are here in this world rather than some place else; why the world in which they find themselves is so full of the undesirable; and whether it would not have been better if the ball on which they ride and riot had been in the beginning sterilised, are problems too deep and baffling for the most of them. But since they are here, and since they are too proud or too superstitious to die, and are surrounded by such cold and wolfish immensities, what would seem more proper than for them to be kind to each other, and helpful, and dwell together as loving and forbearing members of One Great Family?”

J. Howard Moore (1862–1916)

"Conclusion", pp. 324–325
The Universal Kinship (1906), The Ethical Kinship

J. Howard Moore photo
Jack McDevitt photo
Assata Shakur photo
Roy Jenkins photo
Jerry Cantrell photo

“On Nirvana being inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.”

Jerry Cantrell (1966) American musician and songwriter

https://www.cleveland.com/entertainment/2014/05/nirvanas_rock_hall_induction_r.html, Nirvana's Rock Hall induction raises hopes of Alice in Chains' co-founder Jerry Cantrell, Cleveland.com, May 13, 2014

Chris Cornell photo

“I think Freddie Mercury is probably the best of all time, in terms of a rock voice. There was a vulnerability to it, his technical ability was amazing, and so much of his personality would come out through his voice. I’m not even a guy to buy Queen records, really, and I still think he’s one of the best.”

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

Chris Cornell Flashback Q&A: 'We Have to Be Aware That Life Is So Short', Yahoo!, May 19, 2017 https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/chris-cornell-flashback-qa-aware-life-short-023857577.html,
Solo career Era

Chris Cornell photo

“Hip-hop kind of absorbed rock, in terms of the attitude and the whole point of why rock was important music. Young people felt like rock music was theirs, from Elvis to the Beatles to the Ramones to Nirvana. This was theirs; it wasn’t their parents’. I think hip-hop became the musical style that embraces that mentality.”

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

Chris Cornell Flashback Q&A: 'We Have to Be Aware That Life Is So Short', Yahoo!, May 19, 2017 https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/chris-cornell-flashback-qa-aware-life-short-023857577.html,
Solo career Era

Lucinda Williams photo

“I was always into different kinds of music but just by default, I was singing and playing acoustic guitar; I didn’t know how to dance or anything. So it would take some time, over a year, for me to kind of progress into the stuff that I ended up doing later, the more Southern soul, country-rock, whatever-you-want-to-call-it kind of thing.”

Lucinda Williams (1953) American rock, folk, blues, and country music singer, songwriter and musician

On her 1980 album Happy Woman Blues in “Lucinda Williams Looks Back on Every Album She’s Ever Made” https://www.spin.com/2016/02/lucinda-williams-ghosts-of-highway-20-car-wheels-on-a-gravel-road-interview/ in Spin (2016 Feb 25)

Abu Hamid al-Ghazali photo
Alexander Herzen photo

“In the land of the unarmed, the man with a rock was king.”

Steve Perry (1947) American writer

Source: The Ramal Extraction (2012), Chapter 25

Robert Chambers (publisher, born 1802) photo
John of Damascus photo
Wesley Willis photo

“Rock over London. Rock on Chicago.”

Wesley Willis (1963–2003) American singer-songwriter

Repeated at the end of most songs
Lyrics

David Brewster photo

“Though the large runt pigeon, with its massive beak and its huge feet, differs from its blue and barred progenitor the rock, it is a pigeon still.”

David Brewster (1781–1868) British astronomer and mathematician

Though the slender Italian greyhound has a strange contrast with the short-legged bull-dog, they are both dogs in their teeth and in their skull. The mouse, even, has not been transmuted into the cat, nor the hen into the turkey, nor the duck into the goose, nor the hawk into the eagle, and still less the monkey into the man.
The facts and fancies of Mr. Darwin (1862)

Alan Keyes photo
Nikos Kazantzakis photo

“Tomorrow, go forth and stand before the Lord. A great and strong wind will blow over you and rend the mountains and break in pieces the rocks, but the Lord will not be in the wind. And after the wind and earthquake, but the Lord will not be in the earthquake. And after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord will not be in the fire. And after the fire a gentle, cooling breeze. That is where the Lord will be.”

This is how the spirit comes. After the gale, the earthquake, and fire: a gentle, cooling breeze. This is how it will come in our own day as well. We are passing through the period of earthquake, the fire is approaching, and eventually (when? after how many generations?) the gentle, cool breeze will blow.
"The Desert. Sinai.", Ch. 21, p. 278
Report to Greco (1965)

Tina Fey photo

“They made a porn movie about Sarah Palin, and the same actress, Lisa Ann, played me in the porn version of 30 Rock.”

Tina Fey (1970) American comedian, writer, producer and actress

Weirdly, of the three of us, Lisa Ann knows the most about foreign policy."
"Ask Tina" segment from NBC's 30 Rock website

John Muir photo
William James photo
Will Cuppy photo
Margaret Cho photo
Samuel Adams photo

“The eyes of the people are upon us. […] If we despond, public confidence is destroyed, the people will no longer yield their support to a hopeless contest, and American liberty is no more. […] Despondency becomes not the dignity of our cause, nor the character of those who are its supporters. Let us awaken then, and evince a different spirit, - a spirit that shall inspire the people with confidence in themselves and in us, - a spirit that will encourage them to persevere in this glorious struggle, until their rights and liberties shall be established on a rock. We have proclaimed to the world our determination 'to die freemen, rather than to live slaves.”

Samuel Adams (1722–1803) American statesman, Massachusetts governor, and political philosopher

We have appealed to Heaven for the justice of our cause, and in Heaven we have placed our trust. [...] We shall never be abandoned by Heaven while we act worthy of its aid and protection.
addressing a meeting of delegates to the Continental Congress, assembled at Yorktown, Pennsylvania, September 1777 ; as quoted in The Life and Public Services of Samuel Adams, Volume 2, by William Vincent Wells; Little, Brown, and Company; Boston, 1865 ; pp. 492-493

Audre Lorde photo
James Baldwin photo
Neil Gaiman photo
Dietrich Bonhoeffer photo

“Jesus Christ has to suffer and be rejected. … Suffering and being rejected are not the same. Even in his suffering Jesus could have been the celebrated Christ. Indeed, the entire compassion and admiration of the world could focus on the suffering. Looked upon as something tragic, the suffering could in itself convey its own value, its own honor and dignity. But Jesus is the Christ who was rejected in his suffering. Rejection removed all dignity and honor from his suffering. It had to be dishonorable suffering. Suffering and rejection express in summary form the cross of Jesus. Death on the cross means to suffer and to die as one rejected and cast out. It was by divine necessity that Jesus had to suffer and be rejected. Any attempt to hinder what is necessary is satanic. Even, or especially, if such an attempt comes from the circle of disciples, because it intends to prevent Christ from being Christ. The fact that it is Peter, the rock of the church, who makes himself guilty doing this just after he has confessed Jesus to be the Christ and has been commissioned by Christ, shows that from its very beginning the church has taken offense at the suffering of Christ. It does not want that kind of Lord, and as Christ's church it does not want to be forced to accept the law of suffering from its Lord.”

Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945) German Lutheran pastor, theologian, dissident anti-Nazi

Source: Discipleship (1937), Discipleship and the Cross, p. 84

Michel Henry photo
Marilyn Ferguson photo

“I stood asking news of the ruins concerning their lovely habitants;
but what avail my questions to dreary rocks, who answer them only by their echo?”

Labīd (560–661) Sahabah and poet

Translated by C. J. Lyall, quoted in Arabian Poetry, p. 42 https://archive.org/details/arabianpoetryfo00clougoog/page/n127/mode/2up
Couplets

“DESOLATE are the mansions of the fair, the stations in Minia, where they rested, and those where they fixed their abodes! Wild are the hills of Goul, and deserted is the summit of Rijaam.
The canals of Rayaan are destroyed: the remains of them are laid bare and smoothed by the floods, like characters engraved on the solid rocks.
Dear ruins! Many a year has been closed, many a month, holy and unhallowed, has elapsed, since I exchanged tender vows with their fair inhabitants!
The rainy constellations of spring have made their hills green and luxuriant: the drops from the thunder-clouds have drenched them with profuse as well as with gentle showers:
Showers, from every nightly cloud, from every cloud veiling the horizon at day-break, and from every evening cloud, responsive with hoarse murmurs.
Here the wild eringo-plants raise their tops: here the antelopes bring forth their young, by the sides of the valley: and here the ostriches drop their eggs.
The large-eyed wild-cows lie suckling their young, a few days old—their young, who will soon become a herd on the plain.
The torrents have cleared the rubbish, and disclosed the traces of habitations, as the reeds of a writer restore effaced letters in a book;
Or as the black dust, sprinkled over the varied marks on a fair hand, brings to view with a brighter tint the blue stains of woad.
I stood asking news of the ruins concerning their lovely habitants; but what avail my questions to dreary rocks, who answer them only by their echo?”

Labīd (560–661) Sahabah and poet

Translated by C. J. Lyall, quoted in Arabian Poetry, p. 41-42. First Stanza, lines 1-10 https://archive.org/details/arabianpoetryfo00clougoog/page/n127/mode/2up
The Poem of Labīd (translated by C. J. Lyall in 1881)

T.S. Eliot photo
T.S. Eliot photo
John Prine photo

“When I get to heaven, I'm gonna shake God's hand
Thank him for more blessings than one man can stand
Then I'm gonna get a guitar and start a rock-n-roll band
Check into a swell hotel, ain't the afterlife grand?”

John Prine (1946–2020) American country singer/songwriter

"When I Get to Heaven" · Live performance on Austin City Limits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JKPDFQRmG_M · Lyric video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0EiV423j0M
Song lyrics, The Tree of Forgiveness (2018)

“Immigration is where Trump’s journey begins and ends: the message running all the way through this stick of rock.”

Richard Wolffe (1968) American journalist

Let's drop the euphemisms: Donald Trump is a racist president (2018)

Sean Carroll photo
Jimi Hendrix photo

“I don’t want to be a clown anymore. I don’t want to be a ‘rock and roll star.”

Jimi Hendrix (1942–1970) American musician, singer and songwriter

Rolling Stone Magazine interview, November 1970

Ayub Bachchu photo

“Rock music makes me alive, it makes me awake, so that tiredness can touch me and make me say – It's enough, I have earned much popularity.”

Ayub Bachchu (1962–2018) Musician, singer, songwriter

Bachchu in an interview with Shomoy TV.

Beto O'Rourke photo

“Punk rock, at its best, was just stripping down all the corporate rock I was hearing on the radio in the 1980s and getting down to its most basic roots.”

Beto O'Rourke (1972) American politician

[Tilove, Jonathan, Beto Effin’ O’Rourke: On running for Senate with the expletive undeleted First Reading, http://politics.blog.mystatesman.com/2017/09/25/beto-effin-orourke-on-running-for-senate-with-the-expletive-undeleted/, My Statesman, 12 November 2018, en, September 25, 2017] On his days in his rock band, Foss
2017

Yvonne De Carlo photo

“I played so many oriental princesses and cowtown saloon madams after that I lost count. I broke in all the new actors, to use a phrase. I acted with Rock Hudson and Tony Curtis before they became big names.”

Yvonne De Carlo (1922–2007) Canadian-American actress, dancer, and singer

Source: As quoted in "A girl no longer, but . . . De Carlo's a beauty still" (1975)

Helena Roerich photo
Stephen Vincent Benét photo
Niccolo Machiavelli photo
Booboo Stewart photo
Willis Allan Ramsey photo
Denise Levertov photo
C. P. Scott photo
Anne Enright photo

“I remember rocking the pram with one hand and typing with the other.”

Anne Enright (1962) Irish writer

On motherhood and its effect on her writing — The Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/oct/18/bookerprize2007.thebookerprize

Cui Jian photo

“I think rock music is more personal for me. I have more freedom. I can show more of my personal emotions in rock and roll music. With classical music, I can only play something that is written already.”

Cui Jian (1961) Chinese rock musician of Korean descent

"Cui Jian: Father of Chinese Rock 'N' Roll in UCLA Global (3 June 2005) https://international.ucla.edu/institute/article/11612

Cui Jian photo

“I had a lot of friends who worked in foreign embassies so I had the chance to exchange music tapes. That's the way I listened to a lot of rock music at that time”

Cui Jian (1961) Chinese rock musician of Korean descent

"Chinese rock legend sings on" in BBC (25 August 2010) https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11067241

Cui Jian photo

“I don't even want people to say I'm the godfather of Chinese rock music. I would like to say I'm the grandson of Chinese rock music. I want to keep doing something, I don't want to sit there and tell people what you should do. I don't like that.”

Cui Jian (1961) Chinese rock musician of Korean descent

"Rocker Cui Jian Says his Music Hasn't Changed but China Has" in Voice of America (30 December 2015) https://www.voanews.com/east-asia/rocker-cui-jian-says-his-music-hasnt-changed-china-has

Maria Callas photo
Example (musician) photo

“When the lights go out
come and hunt me down,
keep me in your line of sight
Be my predator, I'll give in to ya
Take a taste, do what you like
Show me how to love ya
Show me how to get you high
Show me how to love ya
I just wanna rock you right”

Example (musician) (1982) English rapper and singer

"Show me how to Love" (song), feat. Hayla
("Show me how to Love" on YouTube) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLTcHyuKAb0
Mixtapes, Bangers & Ballads (2018)

Mwanandeke Kindembo photo
Helena Petrovna Blavatsky photo
Alfred Noyes photo

“Volcanic ash, despite the name, is dense as rock and can cause significant damage to structures, power lines and communications. It is also toxic because it contains chemicals such as sulfur, chlorine or fluorine, and it can therefore affect water supplies.”

Marco Brenna researcher, ORCID id # 0000-0001-6096-6999

Source: Marco Brenna (2022) cited in: " Force ‘astonishing’: volcanologist https://www.odt.co.nz/news/dunedin/campus/force-%E2%80%98astonishing%E2%80%99-volcanologist" in Otago Daily Times, 17 January 2022.

Eminem photo

“I'da flipped every mattress, every rock and desert cactus.
Owned a collection of maps and followed my kids to the edge of the atlas. If someone ever moved 'em from me.”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"Headlights"
2010s, The Marshall Mathers LP 2 (2013)

Eminem photo

“I rock a beat harder than you could beat it with rocks”

Eminem (1972) American rapper and actor

"313"
1990s, Infinite (1996)

Swami Sivananda photo
Swami Sivananda photo
Lou Reed photo