Famous quotes containing the words martin, musician, black, sabbath, cross, purposes and/or forbidden:
“I have thought of relocating, somewhere where I’d be more appreciated. California, perhaps. I could teach earthquake preparedness.”
—Wesley Strick, U.S. screenwriter, and Martin Scorsese. Max Cady (Robert DeNiro)
“The mastery of one’s phonemes may be compared to the violinist’s mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor’s renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.”
—W.V. Quine (b. 1908)
“I respect the ways of old folks, but the blood of a rooster or a goat cannot turn the seasons, change the course of the clouds and fill them up with water like bladders. The other night, at the ceremony for Legba, I danced and sang my fill: I am a black man, no? and I enjoyed it like a true Negro should. When the drums beat, I feel it in the pit of my stomach, I feel the itch in my hips and up and down my legs, I have got to join the party. But that is all.”
—Jacques Roumain (1907–1945)
“Some keep the Sabbath going to Church—
I keep it, staying at Home—
With a Bobolink for a Chorister—
And an Orchard, for a Dome—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“There is the grand truth about Nathaniel Hawthorne. He says NO! in thunder; but the Devil himself cannot make him say yes. For all men who say yes, lie; and all men who say no,—why, they are in the happy condition of judicious, unincumbered travellers in Europe; they cross the frontiers into Eternity with nothing but a carpet-bag,—that is to say, the Ego. Whereas those yes-gentry, they travel with heaps of baggage, and, damn them! they will never get through the Custom House.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“O, I am smitten with a hatchet’s jaw;
And that in deed and not in word alone.
chorus: I thought I heard a sound within the house
Unlike the voice of one that jumps for joy.
He splits my skull, not in a friendly way,
Once more: he purposes to kill me dead”
—A.E. (Alfred Edward)
“I am forbidden sugar, fat, and alcohol. So hooray, I guess, for oatmeal, lemon juice, and chicken soup.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)