Dead The Song Quotes & Sayings

Somebody/ anybody sing a black girl's song bring her out to know herself to know you but sing her rhythms carin/ struggle/ hard times sing her song of life she's been dead so long closed in silence so long she doesn't know the sound of her own voice her infinite beauty she's half-notes scattered without rhythm/ no tune sing her sighs sing the song of her possibilities sing a righteous gospel let her be born let her be born & handled warmly. — Ntozake Shange

Song in the Manner of Housman O woe, woe, People are born and die, We also shall be dead pretty soon Therefore let us act as if we were dead already. The bird sits on the hawthorn tree But he dies also, presently. Some lads get hung, and some get shot. Woeful is this human lot. Woe! woe, etcetera ... London is a woeful place, Shropshire is much pleasanter. Then let us smile a little space Upon fond nature's morbid grace. Oh, Woe, woe, woe, etcetera ... — Ezra Pound

It is easy to be pleasant when life flows by like a song, but the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong. For the test of the heart is trouble, and it always comes with years, and the smile that is worth the praises of earth is the smile that shines through the tears. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Hang me, O hang me, and I'll be dead and gone, Hang me, O hang me, and I'll be dead and gone, I wouldn't mind the hangin', it's bein' gone so long, It's lyin' in the grave so long. - OLD SONG — Neil Gaiman

One of my favorite "deep thoughts" on the topic occurred when one of my other bands, Loaded, was opening for Alice Cooper a number of years back. After one particularly successful show, we got to talking about Bon Jovi. In the song "Wanted Dead Or Alive," the claim is made that "I've seen a million faces, and I've rocked them all." All? Let's ponder.
I have no doubt that Bon Jovi had played to a million people by the time "Dead or Alive" was released on Slippery When Wet in 1986. But did they rock them all? Couldn't it be that some dudes brought their girlfriends to the show and weren't necessarily into their music? What about some parents? Or maybe some people just didn't get rocked? Hey, it's happened to me. I've gone to gigs properly prepared to get rocked and it just didn't happen. — Duff McKagan

They say that no one's gonna play this on the radio. They said the melancholy blues were dead and gone. But only songs like these played in minor keys, keep those memories holding on. — Billy Joel

California is the most reactionary state in America. Fascist sentiments are very strong here. — Ilya Ilf

Me personally, I side more with punk rock bands. I grew up with The Misfits, The Dead Boys, The Damned, Dropkick Murphys, and early AFI. That was the stuff that really got me into music. Song writing wise, bands like Alkaline Trio were very important to me for beginning to write songs. — Andy Biersack

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep. — Elizabeth Bishop

Fine, you do that, and you tell them that at the very first opportunity, I'm coming down there and killing all of them. Mass murder. And after they're all dead, I'm going to kick the bodies around, dance on top of them, and sing a happy song. No jury will convict me. — Nora Roberts

I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes
And make it go away
How long ...
How long must we sing this song
How long, how long ...
'cause tonight ... we can be as one
Tonight ...
Broken bottles under children's feet
Bodies strewn across the dead end street
But I won't heed the battle call
It puts my back up
Puts my back up against the wall
Sunday, Bloody Sunday — U2

All the pirates, and Lord Pitch's mercy, were dead in less time than it takes to sing a song. — William Joyce

Congregational singing is a holy act, and as I organize my thoughts, I hear my old pastor, Alistair Begg, reminding me that in our song worship, we have to be spiritually alive (dead people don't sing), spiritually assisted (through the enabling of the Holy Spirit), and spiritually active (committed to daily walking with the Lord). — Keith Getty

The song was wistful as the ballads Slidell and the Clayton brothers played, except words weren't needed to feel the yearning. That made the music all the more sorrowful, because this song wasn't about one lost love or one dead child or parent. It was as if the music was about every loss that had ever been. — Ron Rash

Well, at first the band were simply called Horsepower, but a lot of people thought that was something to do with heroin. That really pissed me off, so I decided to put something in front of it to distract them. I got '16' from a traditional American folk song, where a man is singing about his dead wife and 16 black horses are pulling her casket up to the cemetery. I liked the image of 16 working horses. — David Eugene Edwards

The sound of the universe is also spectacular around here. In the evenings there is a cricket orchestra with frogs providing the bass line. In the dead of the night dogs howl about how misunderstood they are. Before dawn the roosters for miles around announce how freaking cool it is to be roosters. Every morning around sunrise there is a tropical bird song competition, and it is always a ten way tie for the championship. When the sun comes out the butterflies get to work. The whole house is covered with vines; I feel like any day it will disappear into the foliage complete and I will disappear with it and become a jungle flower myself. The rent is less than what I use to pay in New York City for taxi fare every month. The word paradise, by the way, which comes to us from the Persian, means literally a walled garden. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Again, now, now, again Plashes the rain in heavy gouts, The crinkled lightning Seems ever brightening ... And loud and long Again the thunder shouts His battle-song, - One quivering flash, One wildering crash, Followed by silence dead and dull, As if the cloud, let go, Leapt bodily below To whelm the earth in one mad overthrow, And then a total lull ... — James Russell Lowell

And there were other rocks that were like animals, creeping, horrible animals, putting out their tongues, and others were like words I could not say, and others like dead people lying on the grass. I went on among them, though they frightened me, and my heart was full of wicked song they put into it; and I wanted to make faces and twist myself about the way they did, and I went on and on a long way till at last I liked the rocks and they didn't frighten me any more — Arthur Machen

I was dead. That was really the only explanation I had for the sensation that I was lying in a comfy bed, cool, clean-smelling sheets pulled up to my chin, and a soft hand stroking my hair.
That was nice. Being dead seemed pretty sweet, all things considered. Especially if ti meant I got to nap for all eternity. I snuggled deeper into the covers. The hand on my hair moved to my back, and I realized someone was singing softly. The voice was familiar, and something about it made my chest ache. Well, that was to be expected. Angels' songs would be awfully poignant.
"'I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, when I met you ... '" the voice crooned.
I frowned. Was that really an appropriate song for the Heavenly Host to be-
Realization crashed into me. "Mom! — Rachel Hawkins

What were you going to do tonight?" "I was going to listen to the songs of Rachmaninoff." "Who's that?" "A dead Russian. — Charles Bukowski

I want no thunder or lightning to remind me of my God, nor am I as apt to bethink on most of all His goodness in trouble and tribulations as on a calm, solemn, quiet day in a forest, when His voice is heard in the creaking of a dead branch or in the song of a bird, as much in my ears at least as it is ever heard in uproar and gales. — James Fenimore Cooper

A lot of ideas took us to dead ends or we found the tone wasn't just right. I think we discovered very quickly this wasn't just a song to end The Battle of the Five Armies - it was a song to say goodbye to Middle-earth. — Billy Boyd

It's like a feeling. Like that feeling you get when you've been away from home for far too long, and you're tired and hungry, and just fucking spent, and your car is low on gas and it's getting dark, and you're sick of cheap hotels and cheap diners and every song on the radio and every thought in your head, and all you want to do is crawl into your own bed and fall into a dead sleep . . . and then you turn the last corner, and there it is. Home. All your troubles melt away with one big sigh, and you hit the gas hard, because you just can't stay away one second longer. — J.T. Geissinger

Funeral Blues

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message 'He is Dead'.
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun,
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood;
For nothing now can ever come to any good. — W. H. Auden

all is dead
but for the mosquitoes
singing
their blood song — Thabo Jijana

"Dead upon the field of glory,"
Hero fit for song and story. — John R. Thompson

I was sitting in a movie theater at 4:13 in the morning, with a faerie muse who had vaguely psychic vampire tendencies, watching The Sixth Sense.
At this point in my life I'd had some pretty freaky, surreal experiences already, such as (1) watching my best friend move things with her mind, (2) being dragged from my wrecked car by a soulless faerie assassin, and (3) feeling the inexorable pull of the king of the dead's nightly song. And really, sitting with Nuala and watching a crazy little boy tell Bruce Willis that he saw dead people should've been included amongst them. — Maggie Stiefvater

Bright is the ring of words When the right man rings them, Fair the fall of songs When the singer sings them. Still they are carolled and said - On wings they are carried - After the singer is dead And the maker buried. — Robert Louis Stevenson

There are no limitations with a song. To me a song is a little piece of art. It can be whatever you like it to be. You can write the simplest song, and that's lovely, or you can just write a song that is abstract art ... A lot of my songs are very serious, I'm like dead serious about certain things and I feel that I'm writing about the world, through my own eyes ... I have a love for simple basic song structure, although sometimes you'd never know it ... Most of the songs I wrote at night. I would just wake in the middle of the night. That's when I found the space to write. — Laura Nyro

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. — Jack Kerouac

Squeezing yourself to ooze out the last ounce of sex allure is terribly hard. I'd like to do roles like Julie in Bury the Dead, Gretchen in Faust and Teresa in Cradle Song. — Marilyn Monroe

Tomorrow was my second chance to make things right but it never came. I'm sorry I never treasured the time we had for those regrets I take the blame. You gave everything you had. I took without giving back." Sed paused in his song, feeling ridiculous for singing it to her while they made love.
"Baby, you realize this song is about Trey's dead dog, don't you? — Olivia Cunning

People were saying that Southern folk song was dead, that the land that had produced American jazz, the blues, the spirituals, the mountain ballads and the work songs had gone sterile. — Alan Lomax

Siren Song

This is the one song everyone
would like to learn: the song
that is irresistible:

the song that forces men
to leap overboard in squadrons
even though they see beached skulls

the song nobody knows
because anyone who had heard it
is dead, and the others can't remember.
Shall I tell you the secret
and if I do, will you get me
out of this bird suit?
I don't enjoy it here
squatting on this island
looking picturesque and mythical
with these two feathery maniacs,
I don't enjoy singing
this trio, fatal and valuable.

I will tell the secret to you,
to you, only to you.
Come closer. This song

is a cry for help: Help me!
Only you, only you can,
you are unique

at last. Alas
it is a boring song
but it works every time. — Margaret Atwood

The jam stuff doesn't appeal to me in general. My newfound love for the Dead came from Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia's songwriting, not the elaborate guitar solos. I'm a song person. Once it starts to break out of that structure and become loopy, it's uninteresting to me. — Colin Meloy

And if, to live for another is sweet, if it is lovely for a woman to live for a paralyzed husband, and if there is a song forever on her lips because she is all in all to him, what must it be when you are all in all for Jesus? Wherefore I beseech you, by the mercies of God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice
not a dead, but a living sacrifice-holy, acceptable unto God; and be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may know what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God. How — F.B. Meyer

An important meeting point for me was realizing the similarity between a DJ set and a Grateful Dead set: I grew up listening to how the Dead would take a song and just jam on it, and then transition into another song. — Avey Tare

(About a woman's funeral) Do you remember the part in The Wizard of Oz when the witch is dead and the Munchkins start singing? Think that kind of happiness. I swear every woman there was ready to break into song. Maybe a few of the men, too. (p. 80) — Julie Mulhern

If I'd known he was going to die, my last words to him would have meant something. They certainly wouldn't have been my out-of-tune attempt at singing that old Grateful Dead song he loved so much. No, I would have told him how I felt about him, straight out. No more flirting, wild-eyed whispers in the grass outside. I would have looked at him harder to ensure his image was permanently seared in my mind. I'd have asked him a million more things so I could remember what mattered before I got in the car on the way home from Custard's. Because after, nothing mattered. — Sarah Ockler

Who was born in a house full of pain.
Who was trained not to spit in the fan.
Who was told what to do by the man.
Who was broken by trained personnel.
Who was fitted with collar and chain.
Who was given a pat on the back.
Who was breaking away from the pack.
Who was only a stranger at home.
Who was ground down in the end.
Who was found dead on the phone.
Who was dragged down by the stone.

[song "Dogs", finale...] — Pink Floyd

Everybody's born to do a certain thing
and if you're dead jimmy you've found it.
And if you're good at something,
just keep doing it
until you're fed up ... then do something else.
look..
You're here to make babies and look after the place.
You know ?
(Billy Connolly) Spoken Word on
Spiritual city: -Off of Glastonbury Song — Mike Scott

A lot of the songs on the new album are about imaginary things, things that you can't touch - ghosts and rumors, my dead grandmother, things visiting you in a dream. — Florence Welch

The living take a part of the dead with them, carrying them around in their minds, like a song that lingers after the music has been turned off. — Fern Schumer Chapman

The teenage lead singer counted off, and the band launched into a hot version of "Ooh, My Head," the old Ritchie Valens song - and not really so old in the summer of '61, although Valens had been dead for almost two years. — Stephen King

In the middle of the block, she opened the door of a coffee shop, but they were playing one of the songs she had heard with Carol everywhere, and she let the door close and walked on. The music lived, but the world was dead. And the song would die one day, she thought, but how would the world come back to life? How would its salt come back? — Patricia Highsmith

I thought that you would be frozen in awe when you found the sequence, when you heard a bird's song repeating my Morse code, my cry for help, my S.O.S, when you saw the same numbers in the petals of a flower and the structure of a pine cone, when you saw with your own eyes the interconnectedness of all things.
But I was wrong.
You searched for a male god, a creator, an intelligent designer, or you banished the beauty and mystery of the world beneath the cold concrete grave of closed-eye skepticism. The few of you who could still hear my music felt tortured and misunderstood; you reached out for any conspiracy theory large enough to explain your alienated despair, your sense that the Earth was dying and no one cared.
But listen to me -- you are not alone. Run your fingers through the grass and grab it in your fists, feel my pulse echoing through your blood. You. Are. Not. Alone. And I -- I am not dead yet. — Sarah Warden

Here, listen to this; a poem by a Greek who lived in Alexandria, one Cavafy: "You said, 'I shall go to another land to another sea Another city will be found better than this. My every effort is a written indictment And my heart - like the dead - is buried. How long will my mind be in this decay,' "and so on like that, it's the same old song we know so well - if only I were somewhere else, I would be happy. Until the poet replies to his poor friend, "New lands you will not find, you won't find other seas. The city will follow you. The streets you roam will be the same. There is no boat for you, there is no street. In the same way your life you destroyed here In this petty corner, you have spoiled it in the entire universe. — Kim Stanley Robinson

Her mother had smelled of cold and scales, her father of stone dust and dog. She imagined her husband's mother, whom she had never met, had a whiff of rotting apples, though her stationary had stunk of baby powder and rose perfume. Sally was starch, cedar, her dead grandmother sandalwood, her uncle, swiss cheese. People told her she smelled like garlic, like chalk, like nothing at all. Lotto, clean as camphor at his neck and belly, like electrified pennies at the armpit, like chlorine at the groin. She swallowed. Such things, details noticed only on the edges of thought would not return.
'Land,' Mathilde said, 'odd name for a guy like you.'
'Short for Roland,' the boy said.
Where the August sun had been steaming over the river, a green cloud was forming. It was still terrifically hot, but the birds had stopped singing. A feral cat scooted up the road on swift paws. It would rain soon.
'Alright Roland,' Mathilde said, suppressing as sigh, 'sing your song. — Lauren Groff

It's good to have some kind of California in there. It's almost always appropriate. It's appropriate on a sunny day or late at night. If you grew up on the Grateful Dead, which I certainly did, you listened to 10 million bootlegs. But you realize that American Beauty has some really tight, well-arranged songs that aren't meandering. — Craig Finn

There is no other greater ecstasy, no other greater blissfulness, than to know who you are. To know the inner space is to know all. It is unlimited silence but not dead, it is alive with songs of its own, with dances of its own. — Rajneesh

Adrian was a vampire. Adam was the Dark Heir of the Fae. Larissa was dead. Alden was facing danger to help us. I was homeless, jobless, and attracted to the one thing that would surely kill me in the end. The reality set in that I had even lost my dog, and now my life was just one tragedy away from becoming a sad country song. — Amelia Hutchins

I was deep in a dream about photography-walking through a strange city with buildings that stretched so high they disappeared into the clouds. And every time I took a picture of one, it shivered and changed into something else. A sound came from a building behind me-a soft song. I started to walk toward it's open doors, but they closed. I would have to climb in a window-
and then I woke up. — Katie Alender

A great deal of what passes by the name of patriotism in these days consists of the merest bigotry and narrow-mindedness; exhibiting itself in national prejudice, national conceit, and national hatred. It does not show itself in deeds, but in boastings
in howlings, gesticulations, and shrieking helplessly for help
in flying flags and singing songs
and in perpetual grinding at the hurdy-gurdy of long-dead grievances and long-remedied wrongs. To be infested by such a patriotism as this is perhaps among the greatest curses that can befall any country. — Samuel Smiles

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
They strung up a man
They say who murdered three.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where the dead man called out
For his love to flee.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Where I told you to run,
So we'd both be free.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree.

Are you, are you
Coming to the tree
Wear a necklace of rope,
Side by side with me.
Strange things did happen here
No stranger would it be
If we met at midnight
In the hanging tree. — Suzanne Collins

Reggie made him feel like he was nine years old and out for dinner with his family at the Ponderosa Steak House and he had run into his French teacher and his mother invited her to dine with him.
Reggie made him feel like he was sitting in a public bathroom stall and someone had come into the bathroom and began singing a song about what a stinky bastard he was while he was in there sweating it out.
Reggie made him feel like someone had taken the red Tonka fire engine he had always wanted and painfully corkscrewed it down the front of his jeans.
Reggie made him feel like the ice cream man had just rolled by and all his dead grandparents were mooning him out the truck window. — Jonathan Goldstein

The world belongs primarily to the dead, and we only rent it from them for a little while. They created it, they wrote its literature and its songs, and they are deeply invested in how children are treated, because the children are the ones who will keep it going. The idea that each of us has the right to change everything is a deep insult to them. — Robert Bly

I don't know if it was related to the type of music that we were doing at that time or what, but Todd Cook actually just turned to me and was like, "You know what would be a great name for a metal band? Dead Child." We talked half-jokingly that we were going to do a band. I guess as time went on, I started writing songs that were more metal sounding, and it just evolved from there. It actually started with the name first, and then the songs came second. — David Pajo

Frank, hunched against a bastard wind knifing in off the Irish Sea, isn't sure at first where the sound is coming from. It's barely light and a soft insistent hiss sits below the whining gale, like white-noise feedback at song's end. He leans a little closer and realises the source is sand rattling against the charred skin stretched tom-tom tight across the dead man's face. — Ed Chatterton

I have not had one word from her
Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."
I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love
"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared
"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck
"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them
"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song ... — Sappho

Most of the really good songs are dead true ... It had to have happened to have the song be there. Every time I've tried to make stuff up it just kind of falls flat. So the majority of my work is something that happened to me, I saw happen to someone else, or a friend of mine told me happened. There is a certain amount of theatrical and poetic license. People are supposed to like it, that's why you're doing it. It's supposed to be fun. It's not brain surgery, it's heart surgery. They're just songs. — Guy Clark

And in despair I bowed my head; "There is no peace on earth," I said; "For hate is strong, And mocks the song Of peace on earth, good-will to men!" Then pealed the bells more loud and deep: "God is not dead, nor doth he sleep! The Wrong shall fail, the Right prevail, With peace on earth, good-will to men! — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

What happened, man? Gerry and Ginsberg are cold, and dead, in the ground. Kesey's stoned, and out of town. We've come to the end of the brotherhood song. The children brandish knives upon each other's throats, and their loaded 45's sit snug in lunch boxes nestled safely between Oreo cookies and a ham sandwich. Where are you now, oh ancient hipsters? Raggedy Beats beat down and broken wheel raggedy wheelchairs down ghostly geriatric wards. Where are you now, oh day-glow dreamers? Have you gotten off the bus and into your Mercedes? Did you get that second mortgage, and bear your fattened little babies? Where is that girl with flowers in her hair? Where is the man with revolution in his veins? We ask ourselves "where did we go wrong?" But there is no we. There is you, and then there is I. You do what you need to survive, And I do what I must to stay alive. We stand here Bleeding, slicing each other's wrists With the icy ridges of hardened jagged hearts, Cassandra's — Bearl Brooks

Sing a song of suspense in which the players die.
Four and twenty ravens in an Edgar Allan Pie.
When the pie was broken, the ravens couldn't sing.
Their throats had been sliced open by Stephen, the new King.
The King was in his writing house, stifling a laugh
While his queen was in a tizzy of her bloody Lovecraft.
When the dead maid got the garden for her rank as royal whore,
King's shovel made it double and he married nevermore. — Jessica McHugh

It was the music that finally roused Leo back to consciousness. "Hey. I like that old song," he croaked, completely oblivious to the calamitous chain reaction of the previous 10 seconds. That is until he realized there was a dead body separating him and Kay. — Delora Dennis

Be forever dead in Eurydice-more gladly arise into the seamless life proclaimed in your song. Here, in the realm of decline, among momentary days, be the crystal cup that shattered even as it rang. — Rainer Maria Rilke

Do or die, you'll never make me
Because the world will never take my heart
Go and try, you'll never break me
We want it all, we wanna play this part
I won't explain or say I'm sorry
I'm unashamed, I'm gonna show my scar
Give a cheer for all the broken
Listen here, because it's who we are
I'm just a man, I'm not a hero
Just a boy, who had to sing this song
I'm just a man, I'm not a hero
I! don't! care!
We'll carry on
We'll carry on
And though you're dead and gone believe me
Your memory will carry on
We'll carry on
And though you're broken and defeated
Your weary widow marches on — Gerard Way

Slowly the golden memory of the dead sun fades from the hearts of the cold, sad clouds. Silent, like sorrowing children, the birds have ceased their song, and only the moorhen's plaintive cry and the harsh croak of the corncrake stirs the awed hush around the couch of waters, where the dying day breathes out her last.
From the dim woods on either bank, Night's ghostly army, the grey shadows, creep out with noiseless tread to chase away the lingering rear- guard of the light, and pass, with noiseless, unseen feet, above the waving river-grass, and through the sighing rushes; and Night, upon her sombre throne, folds her black wings above the darkening world, and, from her phantom palace, lit by the pale stars, reigns in stillness. — Jerome K. Jerome

The sincerity of the art worker must permeate the song as naturally as the green leaves break through the dead branches in springtime. — Alma Gluck

Concert pianists get to be quite chummy with dead composers. They can't help it. Classical music isn't just music. It's a personal diary. An uncensored confession in the dead of night. A baring of the soul. Take a modern example. Florence and the Machine? In the song 'Cosmic Love,' she catalogs the way in which the world has gone dark, distorting her, when she, a rather intense young woman, was left bereft by a love affair. 'The stars, the moon, they have all been blown out. — Marisha Pessl

And little he knew of the things that ink may do, how it can mark a dead man's thought for the wonder of later years, and tell of happening that are gone clean away, and be a voice for us out of the dark of time, and save many a fragile thing from the pounding of heavy ages; or carry to us, over the rolling centuries, even a song from lips long dead on forgotten hills. — Lord Dunsany

Sing it like the midnight wind, Sing it like a prayer; Sing it on to the way to hell, Them blues'll take you there. - Oren Morse, Dead Man's Song — Jonathan Maberry

I heard your song the moment we were born. And years later, it dragged me back from the lake of the half-dead when all I wanted to do was die. Each time someone tried to kill me, it sang its tune and gave me hope. — Melina Marchetta

From the time an Aiel boy becomes a man he will not sing anything but battle chants, or their dirge for the slain. I have heard them singing over their dead, and over those they have killed. That song is one to make
the stones weep. — Robert Jordan

Seattle's Moraine not only make Washington State proud, but also the whole American progressive music scene joyful ... It's simply an impressive dead on eleven song tour de force ... GET THIS! Highly Recommended! — Lee Henderson

The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify by their own lonesome familiarities to this feeling. Ecstasy, even , I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass. — Jack Kerouac

the definition of immortality centered on being remembered. The "living dead" were kept from fading into anonymity by being called to life in communal story, song, and dance. Remembering, whether by written or oral means, is an act of distillation. Some memories fall away; others survive, are embellished, and become stronger with the passage of time. Stories — Milton C. Sernett

There were times when I consider simply taking the dagger and sinking it into his heart, I had ample opportunity after all, but I was still young and tough my hatred consumed me, I still lusted for life. I was a coward, a prisoner whose captivity was made worse by the knowledge of the vastness of his prison. Despair began to rot my heart. I fell to indulgence again, seeking escape in wine and drugs and flesh, an indulgence that would have seem me dead before long, had not the foreigners arrived. — Anthony Ryan

With me, it's so eclectic and all over the map that no one knows what to expect, ... It may not be a great career move, but all these things - singing with the Funk Brothers and the Dead, singing a Dolly Parton song - is great. I'm welcome to all these different worlds, and that's been wonderful. — Joan Osborne

I'd like to protect children, too, but ... is everything worth sacrificing to that? I mean, drugs have done a lot of good ... They've midwived a lot of good ideas ... lot of great songs, you know? I think Penny Lane is worth 10 dead kids ... I think Dark Side of the Moon is worth 100 dead kids. There, I said it. — Bill Maher

In Wright Morris's novel Plains Song, the narrator asks, "Is the past a story we are persuaded to believe, in the teeth of the life we endure in the present?" The question is always open. How we treat our world and each other grows from our vision of how we have come to where we are. Ultimately, of course, the issue is not survival but decency and common sense. Everything passes, the psalmist reminds us. No one escapes. The best we can hope is to learn a little from the speaking dead, to find in our deep past some help in acting wisely in the teeth of life. — Elliott West

The song I like to do is 'Dead.' I'm constantly playing that one. — Joey Santiago

The fire was extinguished, and sniper fire had ceased. Nobody will budge, they were all dead. And the wind swept across jagged rocks, without a song of reconciliation. — Kristian Goldmund Aumann

You know ... sometimes I'll be looking out at the audience and I'll be in the middle of a song, and I'll just stop dead. I'll look out at them, and think what is this ... There's one thing that keeps me doing it though, I really love it, I believe in it. — Steven Tyler

the song of the dead
heavy as rain
on the wide banana leaves
hard as drums — Antonio Cisneros

If 'dead' matter has reared up this curious landscape of fiddling crickets, song sparrows, and wondering men, it must be plain even to the most devoted materialists that the matter of which he speaks contains amazing, if not dreadful, powers, and may not impossibly be, as Thomas Hardy has suggested, 'but one mask of many worn by the Great Face behind. — Loren Eiseley

There is a remembrance of the dead, to which we turn even from the charms of the living. These we would not exchange for the song of pleasure or the bursts of revelry. — Washington Irving

On the brink alone he stands with quick and eager feet. Jump across and run, boy, don't worry what you'll meet. For in the days before you, life will intervene With all the things you yearn to see and all that you have seen ... . Don't close your eyes and wonder what lies across the gap; There is no road before you; you cannot find the map. For with your heart you forge a way that angels fear to tread, And gather up your troubles for the day when you are dead, And gather up your troubles for the day when you are dead ... . Run, boy, run. Run with all your might. The sunrise burns before you, and on your heels the night. And if the darkness lingers long, you'll lose your soul's own song; Yes, if the darkness lingers, you'll lose your own soul's song. — Kristen Heitzmann

But there were years when, in search of what I thought was better, nobler things I denied these, my people, and my family. I forgot the songs they sung - and most of those songs are now dead; I erased their dialect from my tongue; I was ashamed of them and their ways of life. But now - yes, I love them; they are a part of my blood; they, with all their virtues and their faults, played a great part in forming my way of looking at life. — Agnes Smedley

The things I was good at had no real application: addressing envelopes in bubble letters with smiling creatures on the flap. Making sludgy coffee I drank with grave affect. Finding a certain desired song playing on the radio, like a medium scanning for news of the dead. — Emma Cline

Beckett, where's Eve?"
When he had her pressed to his chest, she tried again. "Are you going to tell me or what?"
Beckett sighed and looked into her face. "I left her, babycakes. She needs wings, not handcuffs."
He held Livia tighter, like she was a teddy bear.
She stopped moving her feet and hugged him around the neck. "You're not handcuffs. Don't you know that? She loves you. She does, I've seen it."
Beckett resumed dancing, dipping her again. "Look around, Whitebread. She's not here. She didn't try to stop me from coming. Her heart belongs to a dead man and a dream. I'm neither of those things." Beckett released her and clapped for the end of the song. He reached in his pocket and produced a crumpled envelope. "Here's my gift to you guys. I'm sure Blake won't want to accept it, but I'm hoping you'll convince him. For me. — Debra Anastasia

Weird, isn't it Somehow in the dead of winter when its 40 below, so cold your words just freeze in the air, you think you'll never hear a robin's song again or see a blossom on a cherry tree, when one day you wake up and bingo, light coming through the mini blinds is softened with a tick of rose and the cold morning air has lost its bite. It's spring once again, the streets are paved with mud and the hills are alive with the sound of mosquitos. — Andrew Schneider

You people talk about the living and the dead as if they were two mutually exclusive categories. As if you cannot have a river that is also a road, or a song that is also a color. — Neil Gaiman

We're all about trying to play better every night, not just singing hit songs ... we ad lib, and every night there's jamming .. it's almost like the Grateful Dead meets Buck Owens some nights, because we'll go off on little adventures and sometimes we do crash the bus! ... — Brad Paisley

When you're dead, everything in the world is like a song that makes you cry. — Adam Selzer

I am more interested in how people interpret the phrase 'Elect The Dead' than what I may or may not have intended. I named the album after the track, which is a spiritual song about love, life and death and is the heaviest song on the album without having any heavy instruments. — Serj Tankian

'Tis easy enough to be pleasant, When life flows along like a song; But the man worth while is the one who will smile when everything goes dead wrong. — Ella Wheeler Wilcox

Mad Girl's Love Song
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)
I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.) — Sylvia Plath

Ancient one sleeping, waiting to rise
When earth's power bleeds sacred red
The mark strikes true; Queen Tsi Sgili will devise
He shall be washed from his entombing bed
Through the hand of the dead he is free
Terrible beauty, monstrous sight
Ruled again they shall be
Women shall kneel to his dark might
Kalona's song sounds sweet
As we slaughter with cold heat — Kristin Cast

The wind played in her hair. The moon looked down from its throne in the royal purple sky and smiled at her. The night was brighter than she'd ever seen before, a velvet carpet strewn with stars that winked diamond bright and sang faint ice-cold snatches of song, of distant journeys and enchantments in other realms. The magic in the land nourished parts of her that had been crippled and half dead. She felt stronger, freer and wilder than she ever had before. She leaped high and reached up to tickle the edge of the moon, who laughed in delight. — Thea Harrison

Could we dig up this long-buried treasure, Were it worth the pleasure, We never could learn love's song, We are parted too long. Could the passionate past that is fled Call back its dead, Could we live it all over again, Were it worth the pain! — Oscar Wilde