May 27, 2014

Good Morning! Here are your daily birthday quotations...

Dashiell Hammett (1894 – 1961):

“The problem with putting two and two together is that sometimes you get four, and sometimes you get twenty-two.”

and

“I don t mind a reasonable amount of trouble.”

and

“My way of learning is to heave a wild and unpredictable monkey-wrench into the machinery.”

Rachel Carson (1907 – 1964):

“The more clearly we can focus our attention on the wonders and realities of the universe about us, the less taste we shall have for destruction.”

and

“Those who contemplate the beauty of the earth find reserves of strength that will endure as long as life lasts. There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature -- the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter.”

John Cheever (1912 – 1982):

“I can’t write without a reader. It’s precisely like a kiss—you can’t do it alone.”

and

“I've been homesick for countries I've never been, and longed to be where I couldn't be.”

and

“The need to write comes from the need to make sense of one's life and discover one's usefulness.”

and

“Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos… to celebrate a world that lies spread out around us like a bewildering and stupendous dream.”

and

“Literature has been our salvation, literature has inspired and guided lovers, routed despair and can perhaps in this case save the world.”

John Barth (1930 - ):

“Everyone is necessarily the hero of his own life story.”

and

“Every artist joins a conversation that's been going on for generations, even millennia, before he or she joins the scene.”

Harlan Ellison (1934 - ):

“You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. No one is entitled to be ignorant.”

and

“Writing is the hardest work in the world. I have been a bricklayer and a truck driver, and I tell you – as if you haven't been told a million times already – that writing is harder. Lonelier. And nobler and more enriching.”

Siouxsie Sioux (1957 - ):

“People forget the punk thing was really good for women. It motivated them to pick up a guitar rather than be a chanteuse. It allowed us to be aggressive.”

Neil Finn (1958 - ):

Six Months in a Leaky Boat

When I was a young boy

I wanted to sail around the world

That's the life for me, living on the sea

Spirit of a sailor, circumnavigates the globe

The lust of a pioneer, will acknowledge

No frontier

I remember you by, thunderclap in the sky

Lightning flash, tempers flare

'Round the horn if you dare

I just spent six months in a leaky boat

Lucky just to keep afloat

Aotearoa, rugged individual

Glisten like a pearl

At the bottom of the world

The tyranny of distance

Didn't stop the cavalier

So why should it stop me

I'll conquer and stay free

Ah c'mon all you lads

Let's forget and forgive

There's a world to explore

Tales to tell back on shore

I just spent six months in a leaky boat

Six months in a leaky boat

Ship-wrecked love can be cruel

Don't be fooled by her kind

There's a wind in my sails

Will protect and prevail

I just spent six months in a leaky boat

Nothing to it leaky boat

Lisa Lopes (1971 – 2002):

“So, let me give you somethin' to think about

Inundate your mind with intentions to turn you out

Can't forget the focus on the picture in front of me

You as clear as DVD on digital TV screen

Satisfy my appetite with something spectacular

Check your vernacular

And then I get back to ya

With diamond like precision

Insatiable is what I envision

Can't detect acquisition

From your friend's expedition”