This is the latest installment of quotes and words that move me for the weekend of 01/05/13 (Volume 24). I hope you enjoy them too.
~~~
“You wired me awake
And hit me with a hand of broken nails
You tied my lead and pulled my chain
To watch my blood begin to boil
But I’m gonna break
I’m gonna break my
I’m gonna break my rusty cage and run
Yeah I’m gonna break my
I’m gonna break my
I’m gonna break my rusty cage and run”
~ Johnny Cash (covering Soundgarden) on album “Unchained” (video)
*
Alternate song: Changes by David Bowie on album “Hunky Dory” (video)
“I still don’t know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I’d got it made
It seemed the taste was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I’ve never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I’m much too fast to take that test…
Time may change me
But I can’t trace time”
*
“People always did like to talk, didn’t they? That’s why I call myself a witch now: the Wicked Witch of the West, if you want the full glory of it. As long as people are going to call you a lunatic anyway, why not get the benefit of it? It liberates you from convention.” ~ Gregory Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West
*
“The truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.” ~ Gloria Steinem
*
“The most important kind of freedom is to be what you really are. You trade in your reality for a role. You trade in your sense for an act. You give up your ability to feel, and in exchange, put on a mask. There can’t be any large-scale revolution until there’s a personal revolution, on an individual level. It’s got to happen inside first.” ~ Jim Morrison
*
“You wanna fly, you got to give up the shit that weighs you down.” ~ Toni Morrison, Song of Solomon
*
“Lock up your libraries if you like, but there is no gate, no lock, no bolt that you can set upon the freedom of my mind.” ~ Virginia Woolf, A Room Of One’s Own
*
“Liberation, I guess, is everybody getting what they think they want, without knowing the whole truth. Or in other words, liberation finally amounts to being free from things we don’t like in order to be enslaved by things we approve of. Here’s to the eternal tandem.” ~ Robert Fulghum, All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
*
“Ohh just like all the seasons never stay the same
All around me I can feel a change (ohh)
I will break these chains that bind me, happiness will find me
Leave the past behind me, today my life begins
A whole new world is waiting it’s mine for the takin’
I know I can make it, today my life begins”
~ Bruno Mars “Today My Life Begins” (video)
*
“Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.” ~ Leo Tolstoy
*
“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.” ~ John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
*
“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.” ~ Andy Warhol, The Philosophy of Andy Warhol
*
“Love can change a person the way a parent can change a baby- awkwardly, and often with a great deal of mess.” ~ Lemony Snicket, Horseradish: Bitter Truths You Can’t Avoid
*
“For what it’s worth: it’s never too late or, in my case, too early to be whoever you want to be. There’s no time limit, stop whenever you want. You can change or stay the same, there are no rules to this thing. We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. And I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you never felt before. I hope you meet people with a different point of view. I hope you live a life you’re proud of. If you find that you’re not, I hope you have the courage to start all over again.” ~ Eric Roth, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button screenplay
*
The Kookaburras by Mary Oliver
In every heart there is a coward and a procrastinator.
In every heart there is a god of flowers, just waiting
to stride out of a cloud and lift its wings.
The kookaburras, pressed against the edge of their cage,
asked me to open the door.
Years later I remember how I didn’t do it,
how instead I walked away.
They had the brown eyes of soft-hearted dogs.
They didn’t want to do anything so extraordinary, only to fly
home to their river.
By now I suppose the great darkness has covered them.
As for myself, I am not yet a god of even the palest flowers.
Nothing else has changed either.
Someone tosses their white bones to the dung-heap.
The sun shines on the latch of their cage.
I lie in the dark, my heart pounding.
Mary Oliver from House of Light
*
And to end on a funny note, I had to steal this from Guap’s blog, Guapola:
Happy 2013 everyone!
~~~
