August 4, 2015

Today is the birthday of the following people:

Barack Obama (1961 - ):

“Change will not come if we wait for some other person, or if we wait for some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.”

and

“The best way to not feel hopeless is to get up and do something. Don’t wait for good things to happen to you. If you go out and make some good things happen, you will fill the world with hope, you will fill yourself with hope.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792 – 1822):

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings:

Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!”

and

“Our sweetest songs are those of saddest thought.”

and

“A poet is a nightingale who sits in darkness and sings to cheer its own solitude with sweet sounds.”

Knut Hamsun (1859 – 1952):

“But things worked out. Everything works out. Though sometimes they work out sideways.”

and

“Do not forget, some give little, and it is much for them, others give all, and it costs them no effort; who then has given most?”

and

“The poet must always, in every instance, have the vibrant word... that by it's trenchancy can so wound my soul that it whimpers.... One must know and recognize not merely the direct but the secret power of the word; one must be able to give one's writing unexpected effects. It must have a hectic, anguished vehemence, so that it rushes past like a gust of air, and it must have a latent, roistering tenderness so that it creeps and steals one's mind; it must be able to ring out like a sea-shanty in a tremendous hour, in the time of the tempest, and it must be able to sigh like one who, in tearful mood, sobs in his inmost heart.”

Louis Armstrong (1901 – 1971):

“If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know.”

and

“Seems to me it ain't the world that's so bad but what we're doing to it, and all I'm saying is: see what a wonderful world it would be if only we'd give it a chance. Love, baby - love. That's the secret.”

Robert Hayden (1913 – 1980):

“Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life.”

Vini Reilly (1953 - ):

“All I wanted was your time

All you ever gave me was tomorrow

And tomorrow never comes”

Ian Broudie (1958 - ):

“Look at me with starry eyes

Push me up to starry skies

There's stardust in my head

Pure and simple everytime

Fresh and deep as oceans new

Shiver at the sight of you

I'll sing a softer tune

Pure and simple over you”

Dennis Lehane (1965 - ):

“He wanted to ask her what sound a heart made when it broke from pleasure, when just the sight of someone filled you the way food, blood, and air never could, when you felt as if you'd been born for only one moment and this, for whatever reason, was it.”