Music, Art and Madness Quotations and Proverbs

* some views expressed in these quotations not neccesarily endorsed by the author of this file.
* for entertainment only - history is not an exact science - dates and quotes not guaranteed for accuracy.

Added for April 2007:

I must remember that I am a man, and that consequently I am accustomed to sleep and in my dreams to imagine the same things that lunatics imagine when awake.

It is sweet to let the mind unbend on occasion.
  • Horace
 I don't know if this is a matter for the costume department or the hairdresser.
  • Alfred Hitchcock, answering the complaints of several members of his crew during the filiming of "Lifeboat" that Tallulah Bankhead was not wearing any underwear.
 They will, once more, perform on our TV screens to help rescue the sagging reputations of that needy and deprived group of balding, clapped-out rock stars who still long for the crowds that once listened to them.
  • Peter Hitchens, the Mail on Sunday (2005-06-12), commenting on Bob Geldof's Live-8 concerts
 I'm diggin' all the way to China with a silver spoon - while the hang man fumbles with the noose.
  • Tom Waits, "Get Behind the Mule"
 A painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen.
  • Paul Valery
 Celebrity is a mask that eats into the face. As soon as one is aware of being 'somebody,' to be watched and listened to with extra interest, input ceases, and the performer goes blind and deaf in his overanimation. One can either see or be seen.
  • John Updike _Self-Consciousness_
 If I don't get my tantric sex on oxycontin, I just can't go on!
  • Jon Stewart
 Make 'em laugh; make 'em cry; make 'em wait.
  • Charles Reade (1814 - 1884)
 Exhausted, I then slept, to awake next morning refreshed, with a clear head, though still somewhat tired physically. A sensation of well-being and renewed life flowed through me. Breakfast tasted delicious and gave me extraordinary pleasure. When I later walked out into the garden, in which the sun shone now after a spring rain, everything glistened and sparkled in a fresh light. The world was as if newly created. All my senses vibrated in a condition of highest sensitivity, which persisted for the entire day.
  • Albert Hoffman; journal of April 19, 1943 which was the date of the first deliberate ingestion of LSD-25
 I wrote this back when my hair was brown and my teeth were white!
  • Graeme Edge, introducing "Higher And Higher" at a Moody Blues concert, 2005
 Are you nervous? "Yeah, but I'm sponsored by Depends.
  • Robin Williams
 I've been living more than 150 lives, totally different women.
  • Claudia Cardinale (1938 ?) Italian actor
 ...But during the attacks it is terrible - and then I lose consciousness of everything. But that spurs me on to work and to seriousness, as a miner who is always in danger makes haste in what he does.
  • Vincent van Gogh, letter to Theo from St Remy (c. Oct 8, 1889)
 Example is the school of mankind, and they will learn at no other.
  • Kurt Herbert Adler (1905 - 1988) Austrian opera director
 I believe that sex is one of the most beautiful, natural, wholesome things that money can buy.
  • Tom Clancy
 Those I'm not fond of have not, as a rule, considered 'warmth' my distinguishing quality. I never could serve myself up in the same sauce to friends & to acquaintances.
  • Edith Wharton, letter to Mary Berenson (Oct. 17, 1920)
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