A Late Quartet Quotes

Odd, isn't it? He really was the right man for her in a sort of way; but then as you know, it is a law of love that the so-called 'right' person always comes to soon or too late.

Great works of art in all cultures succeed in capturing within the constraints of their form both the pathos of anguish and a vision of its resolution. Take, for example, the languorous sentences of Proust or the haiku of Basho, the late quartets and sonatas of Beethoven, the tragicomic brushwork of Sengai or the daunting canvases of Rothko, the luminous self-portraits of Rembrandt and Hakuin. Such works achieve their resolution not through consoling or romantic images whereby anguish is transcended. They accept anguish without being overwhelmed by it. They reveal anguish as that which gives beauty its dignity and depth.

Spring came late. For the children, shut in the dark, cold parsonage, adjusting to Aunt and getting over the death that brought her, the winter had seemed endless. But now the rough moor was flecked with racing cloud shadows; the maltreated holly tree had stopped weeping; the green mould on the graves had dried to an unsuggestive grey. The church could never look cheerful. It was too black, and its voice, the bell, always said 'Fu - ner -al... fu - ner- al...' even when it was only calling them to hear one of their Papa's dramatic sermons.

Ah, this feels just like the old times... I still miss you and the others, you know, and life at school and those times when two or more of us would sit up talking far too late into the night. Which is not to say I would give up my present life to return there, but... Well, even happy choices involve some sacrifice. And most of us, I suppose, would like to both have our cake and eat it if only it were possible

Hello Mr. Gluck, she’ll say if he does. Sorry I’m late. I was having my face measured and rejected for being the wrong specification.

What happened was pain and pleasure and shock and satisfaction all rolled into one. Pain as he withdrew and thrust over and over again past the soreness of her newly opened womanhood. Pleasure because it was more wonderful, more exhilirating, than any other sensation she had ever experienced. Shock because she had not expected such a deep and vigorous and prolonged invasion of her body. Satisfaction because now, before it was too late, he was her lover. Because she would always be able to remember him as her lover

The Citizens of America, placed in the most evitable conditions, as the Sole Lords and Proprietors of a vast tract of Continent, comprehending all the various Soils and climates of the World, and abounding with all the necessaries and conveniences of life, are now by the late satisfactory pacification, acknowledged to be possessed of absolute freedom and Independency. They are, from this period, to be considered as Actors on a most conspicuous Theatre, which seems to be peculiarly designed by Providence for the display of human greatness and felicity.31

THIS IS MY ABC BOOK of people God loves. We’ll start with . . .           A: God loves Adorable people. God loves those who are Affable and Affectionate. God loves Ambulance drivers, Artists, Accordion players, Astronauts, Airplane pilots, and Acrobats. God loves African Americans, the Amish, Anglicans, and Animal husbandry workers. God loves Animal-rights Activists, Astrologers, Adulterers, Addicts, Atheists, and Abortionists.           B: God loves Babies. God loves Bible readers. God loves Baptists and Barbershop quartets . . . Boys and Boy Band members . . . Blondes, Brunettes, and old ladies with Blue hair. He loves the Bedraggled, the Beat up, and the Burnt out . . . the Bullied and the Bullies . . . people who are Brave, Busy, Bossy, Bitter, Boastful, Bored, and Boorish. God loves all the Blue men in the Blue Man Group.           C: God loves Crystal meth junkies,           D: Drag queens,           E: and Elvis impersonators.           F: God loves the Faithful and the Faithless, the Fearful and the Fearless. He loves people from Fiji, Finland, and France; people who Fight for Freedom, their Friends, and their right to party; and God loves people who sound like Fat Albert . . . “Hey, hey, hey!”           G: God loves Greedy Guatemalan Gynecologists.           H: God loves Homosexuals, and people who are Homophobic, and all the Homo sapiens in between.           I: God loves IRS auditors.           J: God loves late-night talk-show hosts named Jimmy (Fallon or Kimmel), people who eat Jim sausages (Dean or Slim), people who love Jams (hip-hop or strawberry), singers named Justin (Timberlake or Bieber), and people who aren’t ready for this Jelly (Beyoncé’s or grape).           K: God loves Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, and Kanye Kardashian. (Please don’t tell him I said that.)           L: God loves people in Laos and people who are feeling Lousy. God loves people who are Ludicrous, and God loves Ludacris. God loves Ladies, and God loves Lady Gaga.           M: God loves Ministers, Missionaries, and Meter maids; people who are Malicious, Meticulous, Mischievous, and Mysterious; people who collect Marbles and people who have lost their Marbles . . . and Miley Cyrus.           N: God loves Ninjas, Nudists, and Nose pickers,           O: Obstetricians, Orthodontists, Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, and Overweight Obituary writers,           P: Pimps, Pornographers, and Pedophiles,           Q: the Queen of England, the members of the band Queen, and Queen Latifah.           R: God loves the people of Rwanda and the Rebels who committed genocide against them.           S: God loves Strippers in Stilettos working on the Strip in Sin City;           T: it’s not unusual that God loves Tom Jones.           U: God loves people from the United States, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates; Ukrainians and Uruguayans, the Unemployed and Unemployment inspectors; blind baseball Umpires and shady Used-car salesmen. God loves Ushers, and God loves Usher.           V: God loves Vegetarians in Virginia Beach, Vegans in Vietnam, and people who eat lots of Vanilla bean ice cream in Las Vegas.           W: The great I AM loves will.i.am. He loves Waitresses who work at Waffle Houses, Weirdos who have gotten lots of Wet Willies, and Weight Watchers who hide Whatchamacallits in their Windbreakers.           X: God loves X-ray technicians.           Y: God loves You.           Z: God loves Zoologists who are preparing for the Zombie apocalypse. God . . . is for the rest of us. And we have the responsibility, the honor, of letting the world know that God is for them, and he’s inviting them into a life-changing relationship with him. So let ’em know.

many of the 1977–1978 punk generation “flopped the hardcore testo rage rite,” and gravitated to a new breed of roots-based rock bands with a foot planted in the O.G. punk firmament. These included Top Jimmy and the Rhythm Pigs, a brawny, hard-drinking blues–rock unit fronted by “Top Jimmy” Koncek, a close friend of and sometime roadie for the punk band X; the Gun Club, a feral, unpredictable punk–blues unit led by vocalist–songwriter Jeffrey Lee Pierce, a blues devotee and frequent contributor to Slash magazine; and Phast Phreddie and Thee Precisions, a cranked-up R&B unit featuring singer Fred “Phast Phreddie” Patterson, former co-editor of Back Door Man, the first fanzine to explore L.A. punk. By late 1980, the NYC-by-way-of-Cleveland psychobilly quartet the Cramps had relocated to Los Angeles. The Flesh Eaters—one of the earliest L.A. punk bands, led by singer–songwriter Chris D. (born Chris Desjardins), another Slash contributor and head of the magazine’s in-house subsidiary label, Ruby Records—would begin to probe punk–blues terrain with the 1981 album A Minute to Pray, A Second to Die, a swampy collection on which the bandleader was backed by members of X and the Blasters.

He was working late to plant evidence that, he hoped, would lead to the arrest and conviction of a reprobate named Brantley “B. G.” Myers. Planting evidence required stealth, skill, and planning. Cody was up for the job. In fact, it was one of his specialties.

My beliefs are dull and dismissed out of hand. I believe that resources are limited and that no existing or imagined energy system can sidestep this fact. I believe that the increase in human numbers inhales ever more resources. I believe no energy system will deliver the punch of our declining fossil fuels at the same price. I believe no energy system will solve our problems since the problems come from within us and not from our turbines. I believe in red wine. And the scent of women. And the nuzzle of all dogs of all ages. I believe political systems create no resources but devour them at varying rates. I believe the politics of the right and left matter not at all to the bird on the wing or the trees dying on the hillsides. I believe in the future because the future is here and I am in it. I believe. Not wonder. Not doubt. Not know. I believe. I believe in the dead city. I believe in the nest. I also believe in the late quartets of Beethoven and Gershwin’s “Summertime.” Oh, my God, do I believe.

From the decks of the warships the foreign sailors watched the massacre through binoculars and took pictures. The navy bands played late and phonographs were set up on the ships and aimed at the quay. Caruso sang from Pagliacci all night across a harbor filled with bloated corpses. An admiral going to dine on another ship was late because a woman’s body fouled his propeller.

I’ve got a better idea,” says my mother. “Tell me about what you did today. Tell me about New York.” So I do, I tell the lifelong New Yorker who chucked it for the woods about the streets of the city: how the subway was so crowded this morning I had to let four trains pass in a row and I was a half hour late to work; how I had a meeting in Times Square and I saw an army of painted topless women posing with tourists for money; how I saw two people dressed up as Disney characters get into a fistfight; how I ate a hot dog from a stand after my client meeting bombed and when I finished it I ate another, on one of the chairs scattered in Bryant Park. A string quartet was playing nearby, under a sponsor banner. “The music part was the part that saved me,” I say. “All of it would have saved me,” says my mother.

She’d often thought of her late Ma as she wandered around the low-rent offices, efficiently cleaning each one with its drab kaleidoscopic decor of orange and brown. Her family home, like everybody else’s, was decorated like this until the tsunami of black ash and chrome swept them into the history books.

She was still in her late twenties, but the gap made her believe her body clock wasn’t ticking but had actually stopped.

It was late. Had he gone out in the dark? Just to pick her a flower? “Thank you,” she said. Because sometimes it was best not to question a gift. Sometimes one simply had to be glad for it without knowing why.

Under the name The Waterson Family, they made their recording debut for Topic, one of four upcoming acts on the showcase compilation Folk-Sound of Britain (1965). Dispensing with guitars and banjos, they hollered unadorned close harmonies into a stark, chapel-like hush. The consensus was that they ‘sounded traditional’, but in a way no other folk singers did at the time. It was the result of pure intuition: there was no calculation in their art. When Bert Lloyd once commented joyfully on their mixolydian harmonies, they had to resort to a dictionary. Later in 1965 the quartet gathered around the microphone set up in the Camden Town flat of Topic producer Bill Leader and exhaled the extraordinary sequence of songs known as Frost and Fire. In his capacity as an artistic director of Topic, Lloyd curated the album’s contents. Focusing on the theme of death, ritual sacrifice and resurrection, he subtitled it A Calendar of Ritual and Magical Songs. The fourteen tracks are divided by calendrical seasons, and the four Watersons begin and end the album as midwinter wassailers, a custom popularised in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries as groups of singers – ‘waits’ – made the rounds of the towns and villages, proffering a decorated bowl of spiced ale or wine and asking – in the form of a song, or ‘wassail’ – for a charitable donation. Midwinter comes shortly before the time of the first ploughing in preparation for the sowing of that year’s new crop, and the waits’ money, or food and drink, can be considered a form of benign sacrifice against the success of the next growth and harvest. The wassail-bowl’s rounds were often associated with the singing of Christmas carols.

In the late spring of 1781 word arrived in Philadelphia of some grand European conclave, led by France, Russia and Austria, that purportedly intended to put an end to the war and impose a peace based on the current state of forces.