Mcghee Quotes & Sayings

There comes a point at which you stop giving things up. That is what i won't give up. None of it will i give up, for my beautiful sister Ivy who lies in bed. Ivy who used to be alive. Ivy who used to be. Ivy who used. Ivy who.
Ivy-who-is-not-me.
Not me. Not me. Not me. — Alison McGhee

Blues is not a dream, blues is truth. — Brownie McGhee

Let me tell you that a girl of eleven is capable of far more than is dreamt of in most universes... — Alison McGhee

Are any of us safe? How do we make it through? How, when you know you are going to leave this life whether you want to or not - when you know that you and everyone you love will leave this life - do we make it? I don't want to die. — Alison McGhee

Don't hurt someone who cares about you like that. You're not the only person in the world who's ever been hurt. Don't be cruel. Don't go breaking someone else's heart in the hope that you'll feel better. Becaues you won't. — Alison McGhee

But there's more to this world than meets the eye, isn't there? — Alison McGhee

I like to read books one after another. Immerse myself in a book, and then immerse myself in the next book, and just keep going until there aren't any more books left to swim in. That's why I hate when authors die. I cannot stand it. There will be no more books forthcoming from that person. Their future books died with them. In the past I have found a series of books and loved it so much that all I wanted to do was read and read and read those books for the rest of my life. Then I would find out that the author was dead. Had in fact been dead for many a year. This has happened to me several times. — Alison McGhee

I'll live in another world, then. — Alison McGhee

Walk slowly; all you can ever come to is yourself. — Alison McGhee

Everybody would grab a guitar and listen to somebody else and call themselves a folk singer. When they didn't know no more songs, they'd run out of them. — Brownie McGhee

I suppose, the natural outgrowth about writing about two friends, it becomes about their friendship, and the complexities of it, and the way personality plays off each other, and what they each like to do, separately and together. — Alison McGhee

I shiver and Tom wakes. It's light enough to see his eyes open.
"Are you cold?" he says. "Baby, are you cold?"
He turns so that his arms are around me again. Baby, are cold?-and the ball of hurt inside me swells. — Alison McGhee

I've never worked with a co-author before [Alison McGhee]. Writing for me is a pretty scary thing, so it was a huge comfort to have someone in the room working with me. It became less like work and more like play. — Kate DiCamillo

A kindred spirit," said Vole, "is someone who understands the deepest dream of your heart. — Alison McGhee

I met Sonny after (Blind Boy) Fuller died, and me and Sonny played in the streets like everybody else. — Brownie McGhee

When I was hitch-hiking, people had to follow me, 'cause I didn't stay long. — Brownie McGhee

Just Me, Just Me
Sweet Marie, she loves just me
(She also loves Maurice McGhee).
No she don't, she loves just me
(She also loves Louise Dupree).
No she don't, she loves just me
(She also loves the willow tree).
No she don't, she loves just me!
(Poor, poor fool, why can't you see
She can love others and still love thee.) — Shel Silverstein

I sang 'A Closer Walk with Thee' along with blues singer Brownie McGhee, ... Then there was a show where Carol Houston, an actress on 'Matlock' sang 'It Is Well With My Soul' accompanied by a choir. Boy, that was powerful. — Andy Griffith

From then on in, me and Sonny started makin' records. My first records, Sonny was backin' me up. Sonny wasn't singin' natural at the time; he was singin' falsetto. — Brownie McGhee

What is the matter with these people, these people who won't stop fighting, won't stop hurting each other long enough to see that a body is a thing of beauty, is a miracle of rivers and oceans and islands and continents contained within itself? That the brain is divided into two hemispheres, each symmetrical, each perfect, each with its own system of waterways. These people of war should be shown an x-ray of an intraparenchymal hemorrhage, of a hemorrhage in an eighteen-year-old girl's brain, a girl named Ivy. Take a look at that, people of war. See, you should not hurt each other, and this is why. Without you ever even trying, this is what can happen to your body, your beautiful body, and your brain, your beautiful symmetrical brain, and your heart, and your soul. — Alison McGhee

I remember hearing Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, Big Bill Broonzy, Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley and not really knowing anything about the geography or the culture of the music. But for some reason it did something to me - it resonated. — Eric Clapton

I only write about what I do, what happens to me. — Brownie McGhee

My favorite country blues player was Big Bill Broonzy. City blues was Freddie King, but I liked them all - Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ralph Willis, Lonnie Johnson, Brownie McGhee and the three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie. Jazz-wise, I listened to Django, Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery. — Alvin Lee

What sorts of books are placed by garbage cans on garbage night in the town of Sterns? Mainly they're old class books, the kind people carry around in boxes in their basements for twenty years and then one day think: I will never again in my entire life open this book and there is no sense in its taking up valuable space in my basement, and they throw them out. Right out by the garbage cans they put them, in cardboard boxes with the bottoms falling out.
Books should not ever be treated that way. It's a sin to treat a book that way. That's what I believe to be true. — Alison McGhee

The last thing that the blues needs is another smart-ass white boy with an attitude. — Brownie McGhee

Logically, when you talkin' about folk music and blues, you find out it's music of just plain people. — Brownie McGhee

Your heart literally hurts when it's breaking. You can feel it, every beat another ache, and nothing you can do will stop it, either from beating or breaking. — Alison McGhee

Alison [McGhee] and I have known each other since the summer of 2001. One evening we were sitting around talking about how we wished we had a good story to work on. Alison said: Why don't we work on a story together? I said: A story about what? And Alison said: A story about a short girl and a tall girl. — Kate DiCamillo

Little boy, you remind me how so much depends of day made of now — Alison McGhee

Long made it possible for me to get on records, so what little money he did take from me, if any at all, he was entitled to it. He didn't take something from me. — Brownie McGhee

Air you breathe holds the breath of all things. — Alison McGhee

I like to write in all different genres. I just like a new challenge. — Alison McGhee

Wouldn't want to miss a war, would I? — Alison McGhee

Early mornings were given over to Bartok and Schoenberg. Midmorning I treated myself to the vocals of Billy Eckstine, Billie Holiday, Nat Cole, Louis Jordan and Bull Moose Jackson. A piroshki from the Russian delicatessen next door was lunch and then the giants of bebop flipped through the air. Charlie Parker and Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Al Haig and Howard McGhee. Blues belonged to late afternoons and the singers' lyrics of lost love spoke to my solitude. — Maya Angelou

My guitar was loud as hell, and I had no sympathy for anybody else. — Brownie McGhee

I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin' in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again. — Brownie McGhee

It's very cool to be short, very cool. When I was in eighth grade, and the height I am now, I would just look at the cute little short girls and think, 'If only, if only.' — Alison McGhee

Water seeks its own level. Look at them. The Tigris, the Euphrates, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Yangtze. The world's great rivers. And every one of them finds its way to the ocean. — Alison McGhee

You are wilder than you know. — Alison McGhee

You are most powerful when you are most silent. People never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words hanging leaping from their mouths. Silence? No. — Alison McGhee

When somebody blazes a path to a highway that never end, you should appreciate 'em some. — Brownie McGhee

There's a lot of good musicians who are unheard of. Get it down before they pass away. — Brownie McGhee

They were stupid, stupid people. — Alison McGhee

Living without love is worse than dying, Younger. William T. — Alison McGhee

I don't sit here and dream because I don't care about the future. I wouldn't take nothin' for my past and I've got enough behind me that I can write forever. — Brownie McGhee

What, exactly, would you give up? — Alison McGhee

Clara Winter," he said. "You are a word person and don't ever forget it."
He was right. He knew. He could tell. It's something that can be sensed. There's a difference between word-people and non-word-people. — Alison McGhee

All it takes is a single moment. — Alison McGhee

I was playing with steel picks on a steel guitar, and there was no amplification needed. — Brownie McGhee

Anywhere I'm wanted, I'll go. I've got to be wanted, though. — Brownie McGhee

That's what I liked about hitch-hiking. If a crowd wasn't big enough, I kept walkin.' — Brownie McGhee

I never had the blues; the blues always had me. — Brownie McGhee

I don't know what Alison [McGhee] thinks, but I very strongly doubt that we will ever see the parents of Bink or Gollie. However, I do think it would be fun to make Tony Fucile draw portraits of the parental units and have those portraits sitting on Bink's mantel or in Gollie's kitchen. Glowering. A little. — Kate DiCamillo

There comes a time, Younger," he says, "when the book must be put aside, and the pedal put to the metal. And that time, by God, has come." William T. — Alison McGhee

If you know how to read, you know how forever. You can't unread. — Alison McGhee

And out in the rural, when Mrs. Laura McGhee--who if she thought it necessary, sat on the porch with her Winchester rifle--permitted movement workers to use her farm outside Greenwood for a rally, the sheriff came to warn her against holding it. She told him that *he* was on *her* property, that *he* was trespassing and hadn't ever offered any protection from the terrorists who kept threatening to shoot up her farms, and that he therefore had nothing to offer her now and had better leave, get off her land. And the sheriff left. — Charles E. Cobb Jr.

Every morning for, I don't know how long, I came over to Alison's [McGhee] house and we sat in her office and wrote the stories "out loud" together. We yelled at each other and made each other laugh. It was a lot of fun. — Kate DiCamillo

'Someone's gonna die before this is over,' I said to Doc McGhee. [...]
'I don't think someone's gonna die, Ozzy. I think we're all gonna die.' — Ozzy Osbourne

And she tried to breathe. — Alison McGhee

Something is better than nothing. Doin' anything for a man, there's investments involved, there's time and production. It's better to give him ten bucks and get a record out than to never record the cat. — Brownie McGhee

We all walk around with a stone in our shoe, Younger. William T. — Alison McGhee

I'm a big State Fair person, and my main goal is to eat as much food as possible, but I tend not to do the foods on a stick. But I like Big Fat Bacon. — Alison McGhee

Feel how tight my arms are around you?" he said. "This is how tight I'll be holding you. No matter where you go or where I go, remember how tight I'm holding you. — Alison McGhee