Ronk Quotes & Sayings

And then adds with a laugh, 'but in retrospect I think he may have been more sophisticated than we were.' — Dave Van Ronk

One of my earliest memories ... I knew three full verses of the Star Spangled Banner when I was seven or eight years old. And one of the nuns discovered this phenomenon and I was actually sent around from classroom to classroom to do the whole thing. — Dave Van Ronk

If it can't be done in bed, it's not worth doing. — Dave Van Ronk

I'm very pleased with each advancing year. It stems back to when I was forty. I was a bit upset about reaching that milestone, but an older friend consoled me. 'Don't complain about growing old - many, many people do not have that privilege.' — Earl Warren

I'm a very, very stubborn man. — Dave Van Ronk

Dave Van Ronk, for those who don't know him - probably most don't know - was a folk singer. He's kind of the biggest person on the scene in 1961 in the folk revival in Greenwich Village, biggest person on the scene until Bob Dylan showed up. — Ethan Coen

The people are grown very wild and loose in their morals. — Peter Stuyvesant

I cut myself off from the mainstream of jazz. It stood me in good stead later on, as a musician. — Dave Van Ronk

He finds me charming and so long as I don't think about it, it's ok, but I worry, what if I forget to do it or can't be charming or try, one day, just a bit too hard so that it is altogether not charming but something else.
I couldn't ask for anything more or for more generosity or, and this is perhaps the most important, exquisite tact. — Martha Ronk

A library is thought in cold storage. — Herbert Samuel

If you asked anybody in my family, they would have very stridently proclaimed themselves middle class. My mother and father were separated, so he doesn't count. — Dave Van Ronk

Most of what I listen to now is mainstream jazz from 1935 right up to and including early bebop and cool jazz. — Dave Van Ronk

You can't be afraid of failure and you can't be afraid of success, because either one gets in the way of your work. — Dave Van Ronk

If there was ever any truth to the trickle-down theory, the only evidence of it I've ever seen was in that period of 1960 to 1965. All of sudden they were handing out major label recording contracts like they were coming in Cracker Jack boxes. — Dave Van Ronk

I don't think I went a year or so without a record between 1959 and 1979, sometimes two. — Dave Van Ronk

I'll wear you down," he proclaimed.
"No, you won't," I denied.
"You won't let me in, I'll break in, sneak in, blast in," he promised.
"You won't get in," I contradicted.
He shut up again and stared at me.
After long moments, I watched as suddenly, weirdly and, most of all, scarily, he saw something in me that made his face clear.
I didn't think that was good.
I would find out I was right.
"Let you in on a secret, babe, and you think on this," he told me.
I was not going to think on anything.
"Hop ... get ... off ... me," I snapped.
His body pressed into mine so he could lift his hands up and frame my face.
"I'm already in. Just gotta wait for you to realize it. — Kristen Ashley

My uncle and my grandfather both worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. — Dave Van Ronk

After all, important fresh evidence is a two-edged thing, and may possibly cut in a very different direction to that which Lestrade imagines. Take your breakfast, Watson, and we will go out together and see what we can do. I feel as if I shall need your company and your moral support today. — Arthur Conan Doyle

If you look at music, you see theme, variation, you see symmetry, asymmetry, you see structure, and these are related to skills in the real world. — Dave Van Ronk

What's funny in 'The Mayor of MacDougal Street' is how Dave Van Ronk talks a lot about the time and how exciting it was and how electric it was. — Oscar Isaac

By the mid-70s, I wanted to get out of the business. I was tired anyway. — Dave Van Ronk

Most blues don't have a beginning, middle, or end. You just cut a couple slices of blues. — Dave Van Ronk

I've only ever kissed one girl: my Dorothy. We met in 1915 and married in 1918. She died in 1970. — Henry Allingham

I'm an exhibitionist, I was an exhibitionist as a kid. — Dave Van Ronk

They basically said that if I didn't show up for school they'd mark me present, they wouldn't send the truant officer after me. At 16 I enrolled in something called continuing education. Once a month I'd go out to Jamaica, but I didn't take it seriously. — Dave Van Ronk

Honesty is the cruelest game of all, because not only can you hurt someone - and hurt them to the bone - you can feel self-righteous about it at the same time. — Dave Van Ronk

There is an apprenticeship system in jazz. You teach the young ones. So even if the musicians weren't personally that likable, they felt an obligation to help the younger musicians. — Dave Van Ronk

In the early 1970s. 1971, '72. The rooms were closing down, record labels weren't signing acoustic acts any more. Although they had been pretty much been getting out of that for some time before that. — Dave Van Ronk

When you're working in front of an audience, you have incentive to excel. — Dave Van Ronk

If I do a piece in my living room, if I practice it - and I have the tapes to prove this - it's not going to be as good as doing the same piece in front of an audience. — Dave Van Ronk

God has a way of telling you when to change your strings. — Dave Van Ronk

I think I have more in common with a carpenter than you might think. We're putting things together. — Dave Van Ronk

Ian and Sylvia, who, when you got right down to it, were essentially country and western singers. I just recorded his Four Strong Winds. It's a wonderful song. — Dave Van Ronk

Everyone carries around his own monsters.
Richard Pryor — Jonathan Maberry

Sometimes you have to forget your principles and do what's right. — Dave Van Ronk