Fisher King Quotes

Freedom is a small price to pay for survival.

I shake my shoulders to get rid of all my feels. I hate these people. They're so annoying. Except I king of like Silas. Kind of.

It's important to think. It's what separates us from lentils. (The Fisher King)

A man must consent to look to a foolish, innocent, adolescent part of himself for his cure. The inner fool is the only one who can touch his Fisher King wound.

Our story begins with the Grail castle, which is in serious trouble. The Fisher King, the king of the castle, has been wounded. His wounds are so severe that he cannot live, yet he is incapable of dying. He groans; he cries out; he suffers constantly. The whole land is in desolation, for a land mirrors the condition of its king, inwardly in a mythological dimension, as well as outwardly in the physical world. The cattle do not reproduce; the crops won’t grow; knights are killed; children are orphaned; maidens weep; there is mourning everywhere—all because the Fisher King is wounded.

A country where everybody always running from the next body feeling they’s better. But mark my words, one of these days they gon all run out of where-to-run. ~ Ulene

Sir Thomas More (7 February 1478 – 6 July 1535), also known as Saint Thomas More, was an English lawyer, author, and statesman. During his lifetime he earned a reputation as a leading humanist scholar and occupied many public offices, including that of Lord Chancellor from 1529 to 1532. More coined the word "utopia", a name he gave to an ideal, imaginary island nation whose political system he described in a book published in 1516. He is chiefly remembered for his principled refusal to accept King Henry VIII's claim to be supreme head of the Church of England, a decision which ended his political career and led to his execution as a traitor. In 1935, four hundred years after his death, More was canonized in the Catholic Church by Pope Pius XI, and was later declared the patron saint of lawyers and statesmen. He shares his feast day, June 22 on the Catholic calendar of saints, with Saint John Fisher, the only Bishop during the English Reformation to maintain his allegiance to the Pope. More was added to the Anglican Churches' calendar of saints in 1980. Source: Wikipedia

The Stetson passage is an allusion to Frazer theory in The Golden Bough that religion originated as agricultural engineering. Through a grotesque process of literalization, all of the dying gods and heroes in The Golden Bough, along with Christ and the Fisher King, are transferred from mythic to modern consciousness ( Frazer himself was an unabashed positivist) to be made explicable in scientific terms as fertilizer.

What sorrow is like to the sorrow of one who is alone? Once I dwelt in the company of the king I loved well, And my arm was heavy with the weight of the rings he gave, And my heart weighed down with the gold of his love. The face the king is like the sun to those who surrounded,. But now my heart is empty And I wander along throughout the world. The groves take on their blossoms, The trees and meadows grow fair But the cuckoo, saddest of singers, Cries forth the only sorrow of the exile, And now my heart hoes wandering, In search of what I shall never see more; All faces are alike to me if I cannot see the face of my king, And all countries are alike to me When I cannot see the fair fields and meadows of my home. So I shall arise and follow my heart in its wandering For what is the fair meadow of home to me When I cannot see the face of my king And the weight on my arm is but a band of gold When the heart is empty of the weight of love. And so I shall go roaming Over the fishers' road And the road of the great whale And beyond the country of the wave With none to bear me company But the memory of those I loved And the songs I sang out of a full heart, And the cuckoo's cry in memory.

Mark, and the Fisher-King man and this preposterous Indian fakir simply as Men—complacent, patriarchal figures making arrangements for women as if women were children or bartering them like cattle.

I doubt if there is a woman in the world who has not had to mutely stand by as she watched a man agonize over his Fisher King aspect. She may be the one who notices, even before the man himself is aware of it, that there is suffering and a haunting sense of injury and incompleteness in him. A man suffering in this way is often driven to do idiotic things to cure the wound and ease the desperation he feels. Usually he seeks an unconscious solution outside of himself, complaining about his work, his marriage, or his place in the world.

We’re done, this is over. I’m packing your shit and you’re leaving.” I’m sorry, I love you, please forgive me. “Everything is fucked up, don’t you get that? It’s ruined, all of it is ruined and you need to fucking leave.” I’m so sorry, I love you, please forgive me. “You need to get a life.” I’m sorry, I love you, please forgive me. “All those sad, pathetic letters.” I’m lying, don’t believe me, please don’t believe me. I loved your letters, I kept them all and I cherish every one of them. “I prefer women with a little more experience.” I don’t mean it. I don’t mean any of it. Knowing I’m the only man who has ever been inside of you makes me feel like a fucking king and the luckiest man alive. I’m sorry, I love you, please forgive me. “It doesn’t get better when I come home to you. I hate this life.” I’m lying! Every word is a lie. I love our life and I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. I love you, I love you, I love you.

He can climb anything lightning fast and is the king of the forest insofar as using the canopy as a highway. While his favorite food is voles, caught on the floors of forest and meadow, he much enjoys squirrels of all kinds and is the only hunter of squirrels who can follow them to the highest, thinnest branches; not even the fisher, eing heavier, can achieve that dangerous elevation. He eats everything else he can find, of course, but given his druthers, like today's late-summer bounty, he would have a vole for breakfast and then some thimbleberries and a cricket as a midmorning snack and then another vole for late lunch, followed by huckleberries in the afternoon, most of a dead White-crowned sparrow, some early white-oak acorns...and then, delightfully a young flying squirrel...

This book is fiction and all the characters are my own, but it was inspired by the story of the Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. I first heard of the place in the summer of 2014 and discovered Ben Montgomery’s exhaustive reporting in the Tampa Bay Times. Check out the newspaper’s archive for a firsthand look. Mr. Montgomery’s articles led me to Dr. Erin Kimmerle and her archaeology students at the University of South Florida. Their forensic studies of the grave sites were invaluable and are collected in their Report on the Investigation into the Deaths and Burials at the Former Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, Florida. It is available at the university’s website. When Elwood reads the school pamphlet in the infirmary, I quote from their report on the school’s day-to-day functions. Officialwhitehouseboys.org is the website of Dozier survivors, and you can go there for the stories of former students in their own words. I quote White House Boy Jack Townsley in chapter four, when Spencer is describing his attitude toward discipline. Roger Dean Kiser’s memoir, The White House Boys: An American Tragedy, and Robin Gaby Fisher’s The Boys of the Dark: A Story of Betrayal and Redemption in the Deep South (written with Michael O’McCarthy and Robert W. Straley) are excellent accounts. Nathaniel Penn’s GQ article “Buried Alive: Stories From Inside Solitary Confinement” contains an interview with an inmate named Danny Johnson in which he says, “The worst thing that’s ever happened to me in solitary confinement happens to me every day. It’s when I wake up.” Mr. Johnson spent twenty-seven years in solitary confinement; I have recast that quote in chapter sixteen. Former prison warden Tom Murton wrote about the Arkansas prison system in his book with Joe Hyams called Accomplices to the Crime: The Arkansas Prison Scandal. It provides a ground’s-eye view of prison corruption and was the basis of the movie Brubaker, which you should see if you haven’t. Julianne Hare’s Historic Frenchtown: Heart and Heritage in Tallahassee is a wonderful history of that African-American community over the years. I quote the Reverend Martin Luther King Jr. a bunch; it was energizing to hear his voice in my head. Elwood cites his “Speech Before the Youth March for Integrated Schools” (1959); the 1962 LP Martin Luther King at Zion Hill, specifically the “Fun Town” section; his “Letter from Birmingham Jail”; and his 1962 speech at Cornell College. The “Negroes are Americans” James Baldwin quote is from “Many Thousands Gone” in Notes of a Native Son. I was trying to see what was on TV on July 3, 1975. The New York Times archive has the TV listings for that night, and I found a good nugget.

don’t forget, George Lucas was the man who made me into a little doll! And it barely even hurt. A little doll that one of my exes could stick pins into whenever he was annoyed with me. (I found it in the drawer.) He also made me into a shampoo bottle where people could twist off my head and pour liquid out of my neck. Paging Dr. Freud! And then there was a soap that read, “Lather up with Leia and you’ll feel like a Princess yourself.” (Boys!) Oh! And the nice people at Burger King made me into a watch. And you know Mr. Potato Head? Well, they

Bridges once again proves what an underappreciated actor he is, while Williams is at his manic best,’ said Chuck O’Leary of FulvueDrive-In.com. ‘The Fisher King

And all these people gathered to honour the one who had died, was it a man, a woman, a warrior, a king, a fool, and where were the statues, the likenesses painted on plaster and stone? yet so they stood or sat, the wine spilling at their feet, dripping red from their hands, with wasps in their dying season spinning about in sweet thirst and drunken voices cried out, stung awake voices blended in confused profusion, the question asked again then again - why? But this is where a truth finds its own wonder, for the question was not why did this one die, or such to justify for in their heart of milling lives there were none for whom this gathering was naught but an echo, of former selves. They asked, again and yet again, why are we here? The one who died had no name but every name, no face but every face of those who had gathered, and so it was we who learned among wasps swept past living yet nerve-firing one last piercing that we were the dead and all in an unseen mind— stood or sat a man, or a woman, a warrior, queen or fool, who in drunken leisure gave a moment's thought to all passed by in life. Fountain Gathering Fisher Kel Tath

standing there beside this king, Han Solo and all the other characters he would eventually play seeded in him now. And then there was me, pregnant with all those people I would play: a vengeful hairdresser, a hostile mother-in-law, a flute-playing adulteress, a psychologist, a drug-addicted writer, a boyfriend-poaching actress, a boy-hungry casting director, myself, an unfaithful wife, an angry boss, myself, myself, myself, myself, and a couple of nuns.

Joan Joyce is the real deal, a fierce competitor and one of the greatest athletes and coaches in sports history. Tony Renzoni’s moving tribute to Joan shows us why she is a champion in sports and in life. —Billie Jean King, sports icon and equality pioneer The story is all true. Joan Joyce was a tremendous pitcher, as talented as anyone who ever played. [responding to a newspaper account of his early 1960s match-ups against Joan Joyce] —Ted Williams, Hall of Famer and Boston Red Sox great, December 30, 1999 Joan Joyce is truly the greatest female athlete in sports history. And a great coach as well. Tony Renzoni’s well-researched book is a touching tribute to this phenomenal athlete. I highly recommend this book! —Bobby Valentine, former MLB player and manager Quotes for Historic Connecticut Music Venues: From the Coliseum to the Shaboo: I would like to thank Tony Renzoni for giving me the opportunity to write the foreword to his wonderful book. I highly recommend Connecticut Music Venues: From the Coliseum to Shaboo to music lovers everywhere! —Felix Cavaliere, Legendary Hall of Famer (Young Rascals/Rascals, Solo) As the promoter of the concerts in many of the music venues in this book, I hope you enjoy living the special memories this book will give you. —Jim Koplik, Live Nation president, Connecticut and Upstate New York Tony Renzoni has captured the soul and spirit of decades of the Connecticut live music scene, from the wild and wooly perspective of the music venues that housed it. A great read! —Christine Ohlman, the “Beehive Queen,” recording artist/songwriter Tony Renzoni has written a very thoughtful and well-researched tribute to the artists of Connecticut, and we are proud to have Gene included among them. —Lynne Pitney, wife of Gene Pitney Our Alice Cooper band recorded the Billion Dollars Babies album in a mansion in Greenwich. Over the years, there have been many great musicians from Connecticut, and the local scene is rich with good music. Tony Renzoni’s book captures all of that and more. Sit back and enjoy the ride. —Dennis Dunaway, hall of famer and co-founder of the Alice Cooper band. Rock ’n’ Roll music fans from coast to coast will connect to events in this book. Strongly recommended! —Judith Fisher Freed, estate of Alan Freed

Jeremiah 50:1, 2a, 41–42 (NLT): The Lord gave Jeremiah the prophet this message concerning Babylon and the land of the Babylonians. This is what the Lord says: . . . “Look! A great army is coming from the north. A great nation and many kings are rising against you from far-off lands. They are armed with bows and spears. They are cruel and show no mercy. As they ride forward on horses, they sound like a roaring sea. They are coming in battle formation, planning to destroy you, Babylon.

Zechariah 14:3–7 (HCSB): Then the Lord will go out to fight against those nations as He fights on a day of battle. On that day His feet will stand on the Mount of Olives, which faces Jerusalem on the east. The Mount of Olives will be split in half from east to west, forming a huge valley, so that half the mountain will move to the north and half to the south. You will flee by My mountain valley, for the valley of the mountains will extend to Azal. You will flee as you fled from the earthquake in the days of Uzziah king of Judah. Then the Lord my God will come and all the holy ones with Him.

Psalm 2:2–6, 10–12 (NLT): The kings of the earth prepare for battle; the rulers plot together against the Lord and against his anointed one. “Let us break their chains,” they cry, “and free ourselves from slavery to God.” But the one who rules in heaven laughs. The Lord scoffs at them. Then in anger he rebukes them, terrifying them with his fierce fury. For the Lord declares, “I have placed my chosen king on the throne in Jerusalem, on my holy mountain.” . . . Now then, you kings, act wisely! Be warned, you rulers of the earth! Serve the Lord with reverent fear and rejoice with trembling. Submit to God’s royal son, or he will become angry, and you will be destroyed in the midst of all your activities—for his anger flares up in an instant. But what joy for all who take refuge in him!

Jeremiah 50:1, 2a, 41, 43 (NLT): The Lord gave Jeremiah the prophet this message concerning Babylon and the land of the Babylonians. This is what the Lord says: . . . “Look! A people comes from the north. A great nation and many kings will be stirred up from the remote regions of the earth. . . . The king of Babylon has heard reports about them, and his hands fall helpless. Distress has seized him—pain, like a woman in labor.

Revelation 19:11–16 (HCSB): Then I saw heaven opened, and there was a white horse. Its rider is called Faithful and True, and He judges and makes war in righteousness. His eyes were like a fiery flame, and many crowns were on His head. He had a name written that no one knows except Himself. He wore a robe stained with blood, and His name is the Word of God. The armies that were in heaven followed Him on white horses, wearing pure white linen. A sharp sword came from His mouth, so that He might strike the nations with it. He will shepherd them with an iron scepter. He will also trample the winepress of the fierce anger of God, the Almighty. And He has a name written on His robe and on His thigh: KING OF KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS.

oney became king when Nathan Rothschild rose to power over Europe in the 19th century, forcing people to recognize finance over divine right.

My special job is the most interesting I know of anywhere. More fun than being king, pope, or prime minister anywhere-for no one can turn me out of it and I don't have to make any compromises with principles," Morgan once said. His principles-"Do your work; be honest; keep your word; help when you can; be fair"-were the words he lived by.

Every disciple of Jesus has been called, loved, created, and saved to make disciples of Jesus who make disciples of Jesus who make disciples of Jesus until the grace of God is enjoyed and the glory of God is exalted among every people group on the planet. And on that day, every disciple of Jesus—every follower of Christ and fisher of men—will see the Savior’s face and behold the Father’s splendor in a scene of indescribable beauty and everlasting bliss that will never, ever fade away. This is a call worth dying for. This is a King worth living for.

A country where everybody always running from the next body feeling they’s better. But mark my words, one of these days they gon all run out of where-to-run.

I prefer women with a little more experience…” I don’t mean it. I don’t mean any of it. Knowing I’m the only man who has ever been inside of you makes me feel like a fucking king and the luckiest man alive. I’m sorry, I love you, please forgive me. She tells me she hates me and that empty shell crumbles to pieces and I know there’s nothing left. “It doesn’t get better when I come home to you…I hate this life…” I’m lying! Every word is a lie. I love our life and I wouldn’t change it for anything in the world. I love you, I love you, I love you.

Rev 16:12–14, 16 (HCSB): The sixth poured out his bowl on the great river Euphrates, and its water was dried up to prepare the way for the kings from the east. Then I saw three unclean spirits like frogs coming from the dragon’s mouth, from the beast’s mouth, and from the mouth of the false prophet. For they are spirits of demons performing signs, who travel to the kings of the whole world to assemble for the battle of the great day of God, the Almighty. . . . And the demonic spirits gathered all the rulers and their armies to a place with the Hebrew name Armageddon.

we may assuredly conclude, with Luther, that all the fathers, prophets, and holy kings, were righteous, and saved by faith in Christ to come; and so, indeed, as Calvin says, ‘were partakers of all one salvation with us

The centrality of conscience is not located in the supreme self but rather in submission to eternal truth. Not More’s truth or Fisher’s truth, or even the king’s truth, but ultimate truth.

I stepped closer and studied the oil on canvas. The scene displayed ocean waves tossing a fisherman’s ship to and fro, a crewmember frantically pulling on the sail while twelve other petrified fishermen held onto the ship’s mast or ropes. The boat’s captain remained calm. Only one fisher’s eyes stared unafraid straight at me—the one that resembled the painter himself, like he knew the ending of the story before I did.

In these laissez-faire markets, investors were free to go wild. And wild they went. The hottest two emerging industries were cars and radio. Annual car sales had doubled from two years earlier, and there were now more than 15 million cars on the road. Manufacturers introduced faster, safer, and cheaper models every year, and the only asset people wanted more than cars were securities issued by car companies. Anyone who bought shares of General Motors or Fisher Body or Yellow Cab expected to double or triple their money after just a few years.

The threat of the femme fatale lingering through modernist texts. All the dark ladies of "The Waste Land," wounding the impotent Fisher King. She is an excessive, castrating presence, threatening to sweep the subject up into sudden hysteria. Fitzgerald's baby vamps and society vampires, the fast girl who kisses (the real danger is her mouth, Zelda's mouth was selected in her high school composite of prettiest girl). Mythologizing the lives (wives) that catalyzed them. A DeKooning horror: FEMME. He who immortalized her in leatherbound.

Psalm 2:1–2, 4–5 (HCSB): Why do the nations rebel and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand, and the rulers conspire together against the LORD and His Anointed One. . . . The One enthroned in heaven laughs; the Lord ridicules them. Then He speaks to them in His anger and terrifies them in His wrath . . .

Daniel 7:23–25a (NLT): Then he said to me, “This fourth beast is the fourth world power that will rule the earth. It will be different from all the others. It will devour the whole world, trampling and crushing everything in its path. Its ten horns are ten kings who will rule that empire. Then another king will arise, different from the other ten, who will subdue three of them. He will defy the Most High and oppress the holy people of the Most High. . .

CIA officers who conducted Bluebird interrogations at Camp King and Villa Schuster counted on guidance from “Doc Fisher,” a German physician who had worked at Walter Reed General Hospital in Washington and spoke good English. “Doc Fisher” was General Walter Schreiber, the former surgeon general of the Nazi army. During the war he had approved experiments at the Auschwitz, Ravensbrück, and Dachau concentration camps in which inmates were frozen, injected with mescaline and other drugs, and cut open so the progress of gangrene on their bones could be monitored.

Daniel 11:40–41 (HCSB): At the time of the end, the king of the South will engage him in battle, but the king of the North will storm against him . . . He will invade countries and sweep through them like a flood. He will also invade the beautiful land, and many will fall. But these will escape from his power: Edom, Moab, and the prominent people of the Ammonites.

Daniel 7:19–20, 23–24 (HCSB): “Then I wanted to know the true meaning of the fourth beast, the one different from all the others, extremely terrifying, with iron teeth and bronze claws, devouring, crushing, and trampling with its feet whatever was left. I also wanted to know about the 10 horns on its head and about the other horn that came up, before which three fell—the horn that had eyes, and a mouth that spoke arrogantly, and that was more visible than the others. “This is what he said: ‘The fourth beast will be a fourth kingdom on the earth, different from all the other kingdoms. It will devour the whole earth, trample it down, and crush it. The 10 horns are 10 kings who will rise from this kingdom.

did you lose your mind all of the sudden or was it a slow, gradual process?

Unrelieved reality. Some might call it a challenge, others a sentence. Whatever you call it, though, we here in the rehab—the newly clean and sober—belong to it as completely as slaves. Reality’s puppies. Nomads, yes-men, kings.

Phryne spent a blameless evening reading The Winter’s Tale with Ruth, who was still convinced that Shakespeare could bear translation. ‘Why does he take so long to say anything?’ ‘The Elizabethan stage had no scenes and only hand-props. His actors had to create the scene, as well as the action. Look how cleverly he has leafed the innocent conversation of the Queen and Polixenes with the King’s own jealous thoughts. It works very well onstage, I promise. We

(Joseph’s brooding concern for the wasted land reflects the role of the mythological Fisher King of Frazer’s The Golden Bough and Jessie Weston’s From Ritual to Romance—two works which stand prominently behind T. S. Eliot’s 1922 poem The Waste Land as well as To a God Unknown.)

Isaiah 14:12–17 (NLT): How you are fallen from heaven, O shining star, son of the morning! You have been thrown down to the earth, you who destroyed the nations of the world. For you said to yourself, “I will ascend to heaven and set my throne above God’s stars. I will preside on the mountain of the gods far away in the north. I will climb to the highest heavens and be like the Most High.” Instead, you will be brought down to the place of the dead, down to its lowest depths. Everyone there will stare at you and ask, ‘Can this be the one who shook the earth and made the kingdoms of the world tremble? Is this the one who destroyed the world and made it into a wasteland? Is this the king who demolished the world’s greatest cities and had no mercy on his prisoners?