WORDS . . .
Collected 1992-1994 . . .

Words . . . 2002-2003

Words . . . 1998-1999

Words . . . 1997

Words . . . 1996

Words . . . 1995

 

"We want from you not the sneers of the cynics or the despair of the faint-hearted. We ask of you enlightenment, vision, illumination."

• John F. Kennedy reciting a poem to Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School's graduating class in 1959.
• (Washington Post; 22 March, 1992; p. B3)

"Sex and music is all a lot of people have got right now because organized religion is in demise. And I personally won't miss it. I don't think religion has anything to do with God anymore or very rarely has. It is also becoming clear that the material world is not enough for anybody. We had a century of being told by the intelligentsia that we're two-dimensional creatures, that if something can't be proved, it can't exist. That's over now. Transcendence is what everybody, in the end, is on their knees for, running at speed toward, scratching at, kicking at."

• Bono (Paul Hewson), of the rock group U2.
• (Rolling Stone # 640; October 1,1992; p. 83)

"George Bush may have the ability to get elected, to attack and divide, to turn neighbor against neighbor and race against race, to appeal to fear and self interest, but it is these very tactics, which, once in office assure he will be unable to govern."

• John Frohnmayer, Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts under President Bush.
• (The Oregonian; 20 October, 1992; p. B4)

"Great discourse has always been reduced to a central phrase or central line. . . . If I say `I have a dream,' you know what I'm talking about. The great speeches historically have a statement that digests their meaning. [Today's sound bites] have almost become a parody of what the digestive speeches are meant to do. One could build a whole speech whose ultimate argument would be no new taxes, but Bush never did that. The problem is these fragments of discourse that were once rich and stood for a whole argument are now simply telegraphic moments that lack larger meaning."

• Kathleen Hall Jamison, Dean of the Annenberg School of Communication at the University of Pennsylvania.
• (The Oregonian; 15 November, 1992; p. L5)

"Getting old is a fascinating thing. The older you get, the older you want to get. At 30, I couldn't have cared less, but I've jumped the hurdles to reach a point where you understand things more clearly. - Getting old? With a little bit of luck, it'll happen to all of us."

• Keith Richards, forty-eight year-old, and member of The Rolling Stones.
• (The Oregonian; 22 Nov., 1992; p. L16)

". . . [B]ecause the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes "Awww!"

• Young author Jack Kerouac, On The Road; p. 8.

"I have many regrets, and I'm sure everyone does. The stupid things you do, you regret . .. if you have any sense. . . . And if you don't regret them, maybe you're stupid."

• Katherine Hepburn, American Actress, age 85.
• (The Oregonian; 25 Nov., 1992; p. D1)

"I guess I don't so much mind being old, as I mind being fat and old."

• Peter Gabriel, Forty-two year old British rock star.
• (The Oregonian; 29 Nov., 1992; p. L20)

"It's like saying, do you miss the fourth grade? I loved the fourth grade when I was in it, but I don't want to do it again."

• Grace Slick, of high-flying Jefferson Airplane fame, when asked if she misses the `60s.
• (The Oregonian; 29 Nov., 1992; p. L20)

"When people get that crazy about destroying their own ecosystem, where their children will live, where it will even threaten the profits of their own companies, you have to wonder `why?' And once again it traces back to fundamentalist Christianity. We have fundamentalists running our country now. Many of whom, such as James Baker, Ronald Reagan, and James Watt, have said it was okay to drill offshore anywhere and clear-cut all the trees and sell the national parks to strip-miners because, they say, `By the next generation we will have seen the second coming of the Lord.' People who run our government seriously believe this and are consciously working to put a theocracy in place."

• Jello Biafra, Political activist and the driving force behind late-seventies punk-band, the Dead Kennedys.
• (Plazm Magazine #3; 14 February, 1993; p. 7)

"I advocate a total ban on sex . . . heterosexual sex . . . if Roe v. Wade is overturned."

• Exene Cervenka, Hot-looking babe, poet, and lead-singer/songwriter with legendary Los Angeles country-punk band, X.
• (Plazm Magazine #3; 14 February, 1993; p. 23)

"Oh, one more thing: drinking, smoking and taking drugs is exactly what the government wants you to do; the most outside, post-punk-rock, past being a hippie, past all that stuff is to be sober and clean. If you can do that you're really a revolutionary in this society, because it's almost impossible."

• Exene Cervenka, Hot-looking babe, poet, and lead-singer/songwriter with legendary Los Angeles country-punk band, X.
• (Plazm Magazine #3; 14 February, 1993; p. 23)

"I have no respect for intellectuals. They create problems by giving dirty opinions. I am a man of the masses."

• Bal Thackery, the driving force behind Shiv Sena, and editor of its newspaper Saamna. Shiv Sena is a working-class Hindu organization which advocates the expulsion or extermination of India's Muslims. The group was largely responsible for the orgy of mob-violence against Bombay's Muslims during early 1993.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 5 February, 1993; p. A-6)

"The Constitution is a figment of your imagination, held up to make people believe they have rights. I don't believe anybody in this country has rights."

• Ice-T, American rap recording artist.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 18 February, 1993; p. C-6)

"Plans? I have no plans, I may not even be alive tomorrow."

• Seventeen-year-old green-eyed blonde, Imela Nogic, minutes after winning the "Miss Besieged Sarajevo `93" beauty pageant.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 30 May, 1993; p. A-4)

"And, yes, words matter. They may reflect reality, but they also have the power to change reality - the power to uplift and to abase."

• William Raspberry, American newspaper columnist, commenting on "rap" lyrics.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 8 June, 1993: p. B-3)

"You cannot raise the standard against oppression, or leap into the breach to relieve injustice, and still keep an open mind to every disconcerting fact, or an open ear to the cold voice of doubt."

• Learned Hand, American Judge.
• (The Wall Street Journal; 8 June, 1993; p. A14)

"The greatest dangers to liberty lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal - well-meaning but without understanding."

• Justice Louis Brandeis - American Jurist
• ([quoted in]Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 28 June, 1993; p. C-3)

"We have to talk about liberating minds as well as liberating society."

• Angela Yvonne Davis - American writer
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 28 June, 1993; p. C-2)

When your son is six, make him obey. When your son is sixteen, make him a friend.

• Arab Proverb

"Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes."

• George F. Will - American writer and political pundit.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 29 June, 1993; p. B-3)

"Freedom is for the brave."

• Jeanne Kirkpatrick - Ponderous Pundit, finally saying something succinct, on Larry King's radio program.
• 29 June, 1993

"There are a lot of people on the left who think that people like Rush Limbaugh and me have no moral or intellectual legitimacy whatever. My response to them is, `Welcome to democracy. It's a two-party system.' "

• Emmett Tyrrell Jr. - editor in chief of American Spectator; missing his own point.
• (The Wall Street Journal; 28 June, 1993; p. A8)

"I am having so much fun performing, I feel almost guilty. I think, my God, I hope no one comes and busts me for this."

• David Crosby - Acoustic-rock icon, and ex-con.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 23 July, 1993; Weekend p. 2)

"Windows is fine . . . [b]ut be aware that you are not operating the computer, the computer is operating you."

• R. Martin Helick - Self-taught computer programmer, and author of the how-to-program book: Tinwhistle Basic.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 16 August, 1993; p. B8)

"This is the first time I've been able to come, because my husband wouldn't let me. But he passed away in February."

• Fifty-three year old Dixie Brownfield of Lafayette, IN. First time visitor to Graceland.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 16 August, 1993; p. C6)

"I am always interested in why young people become writers, and from talking with many I have concluded that most do not want to be writers working eight and ten hours a day and accomplishing little; they want to have been writers, garnering the rewards of having completed a best-seller. They aspire to the rewards of writing but not to the travail"

• James A. Michener, Writer.
• (The World is My Home: A Memoir; Random House; New York; 1992; p. 349)

"There are eight million stories in the naked city . . . and most of them shouldn't be heard."

• Bette Midler - Entertainment Diva.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 21 September, 1993; p. D-6)

". . . [A]lthough most of us know Vincent van Gogh in Arles and Paul Gauguin in Tahiti as if they were neighbors - somewhat disreputable but endlessly fascinating - none of us can name two French generals or department store owners of that period. I take enormous pride in considering myself an artist, one of the necessaries."

• James A. Michener, American writer.
• (The World is My Home: A Memoir; Random House; New York; 1992; p. 346.)

"I am not the only person who uses his computer mainly for the purpose of diddling with his computer."

• Dave Barry - humorist.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 9 February, 1994; p. D1)

"The crematoriums of Auschwitz did not begin with bricks; they began with words."

• Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 5 February, 1994; p. A-5)

"Open-mindedness is not the same as empty-mindedness. To hang out a sign saying, `Come right in, there is no one at home' is not the equivalent of hospitality."

• John Dewey, American philosopher and educator (1859-1952)
• ([quoted in]Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 25 February, 1994; p. A-2)

"Now you young twerps want a new name for your generation? Probably not. You just want jobs, right?"

• Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., addressing Syracuse University's 1994 "Generation X" graduating class.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 10 May, 1994; p. D-7)

" [Jacqueline Kennedy] became a symbol for all of us, of great nobility and character in an age of general impoverishment of soul."

• Larry O'Brien, former aide to President John F. Kennedy.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 20 May, 1994; p. A-6)

"I've been involved in something which was chaotic and insane. All I can say now is that I am, and intend to stay, a single man."

• Sylvester Stallone, well-known romantic, relating a recent close-brush with matrimony.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 23 May, 1994; p. C5)

"Like I said, I've got too much respect for women to marry them, but that doesn't mean you can't . . . support them emotionally and financially."

• Sylvester Stallone, feminist.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 28 June, 1994; p. D5)

"We once worried that democracy could not survive if an undereducated populace knew too little. Now we worry if it can survive us knowing too much."

• Robert Bianco, Radio-TV editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
• (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette; 17 June, 1994; Weekend p. 31)

"I wish to continue my fight against fundamentalism, which is spreading darkness to many parts of the world."

• Taslima Nasrin, 32 year-old female writer, accepting a $20,000.00 award from the Swedish PEN club after she was forced to flee her native Bangladesh on August 10, 1994.
• (The Oregonian; p. A8; 19 August, 1994)

"And I'd join the movement
If there was one I could believe in
Yeah I'd break bread and wine
If there was a church I could receive in
'Cos I need it now . . .
And I must be
an acrobat
To talk like this
and act like that
And you can dream
So dream out loud
. . . don't let the bastards grind you down"

• Lyric from U2's song: Acrobat.