Quotes to inspire and reflect

Lord, won’t you buy me a Mercedes-Benz, My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.

Fish bones walked the waves off Hatteras And there were other signs That Death wooed us, by water, wooed us By land:

There are many here among us Who feel that life is but a joke

I see my light come shining From the west unto the east Any day now, any day now I shall be released.

To live outside the law, you must be honest.

You got a lot of nerve To say you are my friend When I was down You just stood there grinning.

And here I sit so patiently Waiting to find out what price You have to pay to get out of Going through all these things twice.

You don’t need a weather man To know which way the wind blows

The pump don’t work ’Cause the vandals took the handles.

How does it feel To be on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone?

Take me for a trip upon your magic swirlin’ ship, My senses have been stripped, My hands can’t feel to grip, My toes too numb to step Wait only for my boot heels to be wanderin’.

And if my thought-dreams could be seen They’d probably put my head in a guillotine But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life and life only

Hey! Mr. Tambourine Man, play a song for me, I’m not sleepy and there is no place I’m going to.

While money doesn’t talk, it swears.

But even the president of the United States Sometimes must have to stand naked.

Yonder stands your orphan with his gun Crying like a fire in the sun Look out, the saints are comin’ through And it’s all over now, Baby Blue.

From the fool’s gold mouthpiece The hollow horn plays wasted words Proves to warn That he not busy being born Is busy dying.

The order is Rapidly fadin’. And the first one now Will later be last For the times they are a-changin’.

But I was so much older then I’m younger than that now.

When your rooster crows at the break of dawn Look out your window and I’ll be gone You’re the reason I’m trav’lin’ on Don’t think twice, it’s all right

Come you masters of war You that build all the guns You that build the death planes You that build the big bombs You that hide behind walls You that hide behind desks I just want you to know I can see through your masks

How many roads must a man walk down Before you call him a man?… The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, The answer is blowin’ in the wind.

Where black is the color, where none is the number, And I’ll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it, And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it, Then I’ll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin’, But I’ll know my song well before I start singin’, And it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, it’s a hard, It’s a hard rain’s a-gonna fall.

Of all the questions you might want to ask about angels, the only one you ever hear is how many can dance on the head of a pin. No curiosity about how they pass the eternal time besides circling the Throne chanting in Latin or delivering a crust of bread to a hermit on earth or guiding a boy and a girl across a rickety wooden bridge.

I love the sound of the bone against the plate and the fortress-like look of it lying before me in a moat of risotto, the meat soft as the leg of an angel who has lived a purely airborne existence.

You lose more of yourself than you redeem Doing the decent thing.

History says, Don’t hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up And hope and history rhyme.

It all came back to me last night, stirred By the sootfall of your things at bedtime, Your head-down, tail-up hunt in a bottom drawer For the black plunge-line nightdress.

And that moment when the bird sings very close To the music of what happens.

I shouldered a kind of manhood stepping in to lift the coffins of dead relations.

Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests. I’ll dig with it.

I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed & that necessary.

A word after a word after a word is power.

Father, I love you, yet how can I say thank you, I who can’t hold my liquor either and don’t even know the places to fish.

When it’s over, I want to say: all my life I was a bride married to amazement. I was the bridegroom taking the world into my arms.

There is only one question:

how to love this world.

There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in.

It goes like this The fourth, the fifth The minor fall, the major lift The baffled king composing Hallelujah.

And you want to travel with her And you want to travel blind And you know that she will trust you For you’ve touched her perfect body with your mind.

Even damnation is poisoned with rainbows.

Denounce the government and embrace the flag. Hope to live in that free republic for which it stands.

I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief.

Saturday mornings we listened to Red Lantern & his undersea folk. At 11, Let’s Pretend / & we did / & I, the poet, still do, Thank God!

Walk it slow where you go walk it slow… We in the world Poor as dirt Somebody’ll get hurt the world is black the world is green the world is red, yellow, brown the world is mean

Lately, I’ve become accustomed to the way The ground opens up and envelops me Each time I go out to walk the dog.

There is no Jewish blood in my veins, But I am hated with a scabby hatred By all the anti-Semites, like a Jew. And therefore I am a true Russian.

And now I Foam to wheat, a glitter of seas.