Townes Van Quotes & Sayings

I started out as a folk singer, and kinda got sidetracked playin' honky tonks and such, but I was always a working musician. I didn't want to be Townes Van Zandt or Guy Clark, but I wanted to play in front of their audiences, you know what I mean? — Ray Wylie Hubbard

I am truly a product of Hollywood in-breeding. When two celebrities mate, someone like me is the result. — Carrie Fisher

In an incongruity, as these cases exemplify, the innovative solution has to be clearly definable. It has to be feasible with the existing, known technology, and with easily available resources. It requires hard developmental work, of course. But if a great deal of research and new knowledge is still needed, it is not yet ready for the entrepreneur, not yet 'ripe'. The innovation that successfully exploits an incongruity between economic realities has to be simple rather than complicated, 'obvious' rather than grandiose. — Peter F. Drucker

You listen to the mind, you become miserable - otherwise, this today is paradise! And there is no other paradise, this today is nirvana. If you had not listened to the mind ... just don't listen to the mind, then you are not in misery; because misery cannot exist without expectations and without hopes. And when misery exists you need more hopes for it, to hide it, to live somehow. Live hopelessly - then you are a righteous man, then you are retired. — Rajneesh

I don't know if people understand that there are different ways to raise money for great causes. — Rick Dees

According to all that God commanded [Noah], so he did. Noah did "according to all that God commanded him, so he did" (Genesis 6:22). Therein lies the key and secret to Noah's faith. When God told him to do something, he did it. He was a man who took God at His word. — David Jeremiah

I don't know why I write really depressing songs. I'm a kind of melancholy guy, I suppose. But I figure I'm about normal. — Townes Van Zandt

All of a sudden there's a song - there in your hotel room playing your guitar - and you write it, and two or three years later it will come true. It keeps you on your toes. — Townes Van Zandt

Well I was born a rambler friends, and I intend to die that way. It could be twenty years from now it could be most any day. But if there ain't no whiskey and wimen lord behind those heavenly doors, I'm gonna take my chances down below and of that you can be sure. — Townes Van Zandt

When I first was trying to play the clubs around Houston to start playing my own songs, songwriters like Eric Taylor and Vince Bell and Townes Van Zandt and Don Sanders were just really encouraging to me and would let me sit in with them during their sets and introduce me to the person that owned and booked the club. — Lyle Lovett

There are only two kinds of songs; there's the blues, and there's zip-a-dee-doo-dah, — Townes Van Zandt

The gift without the giver is rare. — James Russell Lowell

Human's can't live in the present as animals do; they just live in the present. But human's are always thinking about the future or the past. — Townes Van Zandt

I'm the mold that grunge was grown in. — Townes Van Zandt

come on mama, let's rent us a boat
sail down that gibraltar moat
shed a tear every time we pass tangier — Townes Van Zandt

There's only two kinds of music: the blues and zippety doo-dah. — Townes Van Zandt

I'd like to write some songs that are so good that nobody understands them. Not even myself. — Townes Van Zandt

I don't envision a long life for myself. Like, I think my life will run out before my work does, y'know? I've designed it that way. — Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt is the best songwriter in the whole world, and I'll stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table in my cowboy boots and say that. — Steve Earle

PLEASURE and pain are undoubtedly the ultimate objects of the calculus of economics. To satisfy our wants to the utmost with the least effort - to procure the greatest amount of what is desirable at the expense of the least that is undesirable - in other words, to maximize pleasure, is the problem of economics. — William Stanley Jevons

Draftsmen may be made, but colorists are born. — Eugene Delacroix

Humans can't live in the present, like animals do. Humans are always thinking about the future or the
past. So it's a veil of tears, man. I don't know anything that's going to benefit me now, except love. I
just need an overwhelming amount of love. And a nap. Mostly a nap. — Townes Van Zandt

I don't envision a very long life for myself. I think my life will run out before my work does. I've designed it that way. — Townes Van Zandt

What I do is between me and the Lord, to examine and possibly alter the state of grace in which I live, and thereby the state of grace of anybody who listens. — Townes Van Zandt

I kind of came from the Townes Van Zandt school of throwing yourself off a cliff and then that's what you write about, and that rule number one of creative writing is you have to have conflict. But if you write about yourself mostly, then if you don't have conflict, then you create it. And the older I get, the more I realize that that's not a very smart way to do this. Not to say I'm the most self destructive person on earth, but it's easy to do. — John Fullbright

How differently we behave in other peoples countries ... no sooner than we think we can get away with it, we do as we please. It doesn't require the breakdown of a social order. It takes a six-hour plane flight. — Aminatta Forna

Every time I finish a song ... most of the time it's in my own head, like this sounds too much like a Townes Van Zandt song, or whoever. I realize there are so many melodies and chord progressions in pop and rock music that are so similar that you can kind of trace it back to other things. Most of the time it's just in your head. — Conor Oberst

Christ, let's go."
"Women shouldn't curse."
"Get fucked. — Erika Johansen

I've met Bob Dylan's bodyguards, and if Steve Earle thinks he can stand on Bob Dylan's coffee table, he's sadly mistaken, — Townes Van Zandt

The following "Rules for Female Teachers" were posted by the school board of one town in Massachusetts: Do not get married. Do not leave town at any time without permission of the school board. Do not keep company with men. Be home between the hours of 8 P.M. and 6 A.M. Do not loiter downtown in ice cream stores. Do not smoke. Do not get into a carriage with any man except your father or brother. Do not dress in bright colors. Do not dye your hair. Do not wear any dress more than two inches above the ankle. — Howard Zinn

Aloneness is a state of being, whereas loneliness is a state of feeling. It's like the difference between being broke and being poor. — Townes Van Zandt

Sorrow and solitude, these are the precious things/ And the only words that are worth remembering. — Townes Van Zandt

What you do thunders above your head so loudly, I cannot hear the words you speak. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I don't think you can ever do your best. Doing your best is a process of trying to do your best. — Townes Van Zandt

Now the dark air is like fire on my skin, And even the moonlight is blinding — Townes Van Zandt

Now you wear your skin like iron — Townes Van Zandt

I think in terms of businesses, in terms of things that are really big and marry technology with entertainment. That's where I like to spend my time. — Nolan Bushnell

What, then, is the government? An intermediary body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication, a body charged with the execution of the laws and the maintenance of freedom, both civil and political. — Jean-Jacques Rousseau