All Thoughts Are Prey to Some Beast

The leafless tree looked like a brain
The birds within were all the thoughts and desires within me
Hoppin' around from branch to branch, or snug in their nests listening in

An eagle came over the horizon and shook the branches with its sight
The softer thoughts; starlings, finches, and wrens
The softer thoughts, they all took flight

The eagle looked clear through the brain tree, emptying thoughts saved for me
Maybe I'll make this one my home, consolidate the nests of the tiny
Raise a family of might like me

Then something struck him, wings of bone
Sweet desires and soft thoughts were all gone
The eagle shrieked, "I'm alone"

Well i was time to flee the tree
The eagle snuck up on the wind one talon at a time
Being sky king of the sky, what did he have to fear

All thoughts are prey to some beast
Sweet desire and soft thoughts, return to me

bill callahan

In California

But there is another who is a little older
When I broke my bone
He carried me up from the riverside
To spend my life in spitting distance,
Of the love that I have known,
I must stay here in an endless eventide.

And if you come and see me
You will upset the order
You cannot come and see me,
For I set myself apart
But when you come and see me, in California
You cross the border of my heart.

The Shadow of the Wind

Bea says that the art of reading is slowly dying, that it's an intimate ritual, that a book is a mirror that offers us only what we already carry inside us, that when we read, we do it with all our heart and mind, and great readers are becoming more scarce by the day.

carlos ruiz zafon

Lionel Essrog

Lionel, my name. Frank and the Minna Men pronounced it to rhyme with vinyl. Lionel Essrog. Line-all.

Liable Guesscog.
Final Escrow.
Ironic Pissclam.
And so on.

My own name was the original verbal taffy, by now stretched to filament-thin threads that lay all over the floor of my echo-chamber skull. Slack, the flavor all chewed out of it.

Motherless Brooklyn

Like the G Train, the BQE suffered from low self esteem, never going and into citadel Manhattan, never tasting the glory.

jonathan lethem

Portnoy's Complaint

"American society," she said, dropping her knapsack and bedroll on the floor, and continuing the lecture she had begun as we drove around the bay to Haifa, "not only sanctions gross and unfair relations among men, but it encourages them. Now, can that be denied? No. Rivalry, competition, envy, jealousy, all that is malignant in human character is nourished by the system. Possesions, money, property-on such corrupt standards as these do you people measure happines and success. Meanwhile," she said, perching herself cross-legged upon the bed, "great segments of your population are deprived of the minimal prerequisites for a decent life. Is that not true, too? Because your system is basically exploitive, inherently debasing and unjust. Consequently, Alex"- she used my name as a stern teacher would, there was the thrust of admonition in it- "there can never be anything resembling genuine equality in such an environment. And that is indisputable, you cannot help but agree, if you are at all honest."

Philip Roth

Hey, that's no way to say goodbye

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm
Your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm
Yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new
In city and in forest, they smiled like me and you
But now it's come to distances and both of us must try
Your eyes are soft withy sorrow
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye

I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time
Walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
You know my loves goes with you as your love stays with me
It's just the way it changes like the shoreline and the sea
But let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie
Your eyes are soft with sorrow
Hey, that's not way to say goodbye

leonard cohen

John Waters

Sagal: Could you describe to those who weren't lucky to see what a John Waters movie is, in a quintessential way?

Waters: I think it just worships um, well it's a political action against the tyranny of good taste.

wait wait don't tell me

Good Woman

I want to be a good woman
And I want for you to be a good man.
This is why I will be leaving
And this is why I can't see you no more
I will miss your heart so tender
And I will love this love forever

cat power 

Moving Pictures Silent Films

Oh wake me please when this is over
When the ice is melted away
And the hunger returns
I will be the same but older
And may be twice the bear that I thought I was

Where have you been and what have you done?

I've been under the ground
Eating prayers from this old book I found
Under the ground, saving it up
And spending it all on
moving pictures, silent films

Is this a dream I've been saving?
Where the hearts beat slower and slower
to almost nothing

great lake swimmers

Hi, How Are You

I keep getting these letters and ever since the movie came out [The Devil and Daniel Johnston] I get 4 or 5 letters a week and it says "Hi Daniel, I love your music. I too am mentally ill."

daniel johnston

Siddharta

-and none of it was worthy of his glance. It was all a lie, it all stank, it was all putrid with lies. Everything pretended to meaning and happiness and beauty, but it was all only putrescence and decay. The taste of the world was bitter. Life is pain.

Siddharta had one single goal before him- to become empty, empty of thirst, empty of desire, empty of dreams, empty of joy and sorrow. To die away from himself, no longer to be "I," to find the peace of an empty heart, to be open to wonder within an egoless mind- that was his goal. When every bit of ego was overcome and dead, when in his heart all cravings and compulsions had been stilled, then the ultimate must awaken, that innermost essence in one's being that is no longer ego, the great mystery.

herman hesse

Play It Again, Sam

"The two of you should get married and move into a hospital."

Paulo Coelho

"Life is about forgetting the answers and enjoying the questions."

Night Before Mutiny

Drifting, land in sight. Never nearer the marina. Did they curse old Serafina? Still we will not stand ashore. We should dive in, I should dive in. Not spend my only nights trying to keep calm. Far below deep waters' rising, rising. They left me here with a ship to sink. Queen of a wide open sea. I kissed the captain but the cabin boy was the one that did for me. Once more we will lie, lie once more will we. Don't close the book before sleep. And you'll be swallowed, you'll be swallowed. Not broken down but eaten up whole. Why am I slowing down now? Why am I feeling so worn out? I don't care whatever you're talking about. They left me here with ship to sink. Queen of a wide open sea. I kissed the captain but the cabin boy was the one that did for me. Once more we will lie, lie once more will we.

serafina steer

Albert Einstein

"The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources."

Lady Chatterley's Lover

Ours is essentially a tragic age, so we refuse to take it tragically. The cataclysm has happened, we are among the ruins, we start to build up new little habitats, to have new little hopes. It is rather hard work: there is now no smooth road into the future: but we go round, or scramble over the obstacles. We've got to live, no matter how many skies have fallen.

d.h. lawrence

Harper Lee

"Now, 75 years later in an abundant society where people have laptop, cell phones, iPods and minds like empty rooms, I still plod along with books."

Emily

Anyhow I sat by your side, by the water
You taught me the names of the stars overhead
that I wrote down in my ledger
Though all I knew of the rote universe were those
Pleiades loosed in December
I promised you I'd set them to verse so I'd always remember

That the meteorite is a source of the light
And the meteor's just what we see
And the meteoroid is a stone that's devoid of the fire
that propelled it to thee

And the meteorite's just what causes the light
And the meteor's how it's perceived
And the meteoroid's a bone thrown from the void
that lies quiet in offering to thee

joanna newsom

Sergei Rachmaninoff

"Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music."