Graham Taylor Quotes

KAREN: Sometimes I wonder, if I was Graham, maybe I would have wanted a baby, too. If I knew someone else would raise it, someone else would let go of their own dreams, someone else would sacrifice and keep everything together while I went and did what I wanted and came back on weekends…maybe then I might want a baby, too.

I said, "You don't understand me. You expect me to be someone I'm not." And Graham said, "You never loved me the way I loved you." And both of those things were true.

Graham: I said "Hi." And Karen just said, "Hi." Karen: We were sort of quiet on the phone for a second. And then I said, "How come you've never made a move on me?" I could hear him drinking a beer. I could hear him take a sip. He said, "I don't take shots I know I'll miss." It was out of my mouth before I'd decided to say it. I said, "I don't think you'll miss, Dunne." And then as soon as I said it, there was a dial tone. Graham: I have never run anywhere faster then down that hall to her room.

That night, when Graham, Karen, and I did peyote, I remember telling myself that if the album was shit, I was gonna be okay. Because I could make spoons for a living

Graham was always the guy I would talk to about stuff. And that night I found myself wanting to tell him about this great afternoon I’d had. It was like I wanted to talk to him about him.

Graham: Rod told me I needed to cut out half of my solos. Said they were interesting for people that loved technical guitar work but boring for everyone else. I said, "Why would I play to people who don't care about good guitar?" He said, "If you want to be huge, you gotta be for everybody.

Graham and I could never last, it was never... I just needed it to exist in a vacuum, where real life didn't matter, where the future didn't matter, where all that mattered was, you know, how we felt that day.

Let me sum up that early tour for you: I was getting laid, Graham was getting high, Eddie was getting drunk, Karen was getting fed up, Pete was getting on the phone to his girl back home, and Billy was all five, at once.

KAREN: I felt like I couldn’t focus on playing if I dressed in miniskirts and boots and all that. I mean, I liked that look, but I wore high-waisted jeans and turtlenecks most of the time. GRAHAM: Karen was so fucking sexy in those turtlenecks.

BILLY: When Graham and I were kids, our mom used to take us to this community pool during the summer. And this one time, Graham was sitting on the edge of the pool, toward the deep end. And this was before he could swim. And I stood there next to him, and my brain went, I could push him in. And that terrified the hell out of me. I didn’t want to push him in. I would never push him in but…it scared me that the only thing between this moment of calm and the biggest tragedy of my life was me choosing not to do it. That really tripped me out, that everyone’s life was that precarious. That there wasn’t some all-knowing mechanism in place that stopped things that shouldn’t happen from happening. That’s something that had always scared me. And that’s how it felt being around Daisy Jones.

Sometimes I wonder, if I was Graham, maybe I would have wanted the baby, too. If I knew someone else would raise it, someone else would let go of their own dreams, someone else would sacrifice and keep everything together while I went and did what I wanted and came back on weekends... maybe then I might want a baby, too.

KAREN: He said that I didn't know what I was saying and that if I didn't go forward with the pregnancy I'd regret it for the rest of my life. He just didn't understand. I wasn't scared of regretting not having a child. But I was scared of regretting having a child. I was scared of bringing an unwanted life into this world. I was scared of living my life, feeling like I'd anchored myself to the wrong dock. I was scared of being pushed to do something I knew I did not want. Graham didn't want to hear it.

You let all your clients rest their hands on your ass?

I said, "You don't understand me. You expect me to be someone I'm not." And Graham said, "You never loved me the way I loved you." And both of those things were true.

Graham: No amount of advice or lectures or trying to chain somebody down ever stopped anyone who didn't want to stop in the first place.

KAREN: Graham siempre era el tío con el que hablaba de todo. Y esa noche me descubrí queriendo contarle lo brutal que había sido esa tarde. Era como si quisiera hablar con él de él.

Graham: We hurt each other very badly. And that is my biggest regret. That is my very biggest regret. Because I loved her with all of my fucking soul. To this day, there is a piece of me that still loves her. And there is a piece of me that will never forgive her.

Sometimes I wonder, if I was Graham, maybe I would have wanted a baby, too. If I knew someone else would raise it, someone else would let go of their own dreams, someone else would sacrifice and keep everything together while I went and did what I wanted and came back on weekends…maybe then I might want a baby, too.

And I said, “I’m not pregnant anymore.” He turned to me with this look on his face like, I never thought you’d do this to me. The elevator doors opened and we both just stood there. Not saying a word. They closed. And we took the elevator all the way to the top. And then all the way back down. Right before we got to the lobby again, Graham hit the button for the second floor. And he got off.

You have these lines you won’t cross. But then you cross them. And suddenly you possess the very dangerous information that you can break the rule and the world won’t instantly come to an end. You’ve taken a big, black, bold line and you’ve made it a little bit gray. And now every time you cross it again, it just gets grayer and grayer until one day you look around and you think, There was a line here once, I think. GRAHAM

The money was rolling in. I wanted to make smart decisions with it so I went out with a realtor for one day, and found a pad in Laurel Canyon and bought it. Pretty soon, Graham unofficially moved in. We spent that spring and summer just the two of us together. We’d grill on the patio for dinner and go see shows every night and sleep late in the mornings. GRAHAM: Karen and I spent whole weekends high as shit, rich as hell, playing songs together, and not telling anybody where we were or what we were up to. It was our little secret. I didn’t even tell Billy. People say that life keeps moving, but they don’t mention that it does stop sometimes, just for you. Just for you and your girl. The world stops spinning and just lets you two lie there. Feels like it, anyway. Sometimes. If you’re lucky. Call me a romantic if you have to. Worse things to be.

Pero en esa época pensaba que la música iba simplemente de eso, de música. Pero la música nunca va de música. Si fuera así, estaríamos escribiendo canciones sobre guitarras. Pero no lo hacemos. Escribimos canciones sobre mujeres. Las mujeres te aplastan, ¿sabes? Supongo que todo el mundo hace daño a todo el mundo, pero ¿te has dado cuenta de que las mujeres parecen volver a levantarse? Las mujeres siempre están de pie. -Graham

How would you describe their relationship? How does it differ from Billy and Daisy’s relationship? Camila says about Daisy and Billy, “The two of you think you’re lost souls, but you’re what everybody is looking for.” What does she mean by this? As you read the lyrics to Aurora, are there any songs or passages that lead you to believe Daisy or Billy was intimating things within their work that they wouldn’t admit to each other or themselves? What do you think of Karen’s decision about her pregnancy and Graham’s reaction to the news? What part do gender roles play in their situation? Were you surprised to discover who the “author” was? How did you react to learning the “author’s” reason for writing this book? What role does the reliability of memory play in the novel? Were there instances in which you believed one person’s account of an event more than another’s? What does the “author” mean when she states at the beginning, “The truth often lies, unclaimed, in the middle”? What did you think of the songs written by Daisy Jones & The Six? How did you imagine they would sound? If you are old enough to have your own memories of the 1970s, do you feel the author captured that time period well? If you didn’t experience the seventies yourself, what did this fictional depiction of the time evoke for you?

Questions and Topics for Discussion This book is written in an oral history format. Why do you think the author chose to structure the book this way? How does this approach affect your reading experience? At one point Daisy says, “I was just supposed to be the inspiration for some man’s great idea….I had absolutely no interest in being somebody else’s muse.” How does her experience of being used by others contribute to the decisions she makes when she joins The Six? Why do you think Billy has such a strong need to control the group, both early on when they are simply the Dunne Brothers and later when they become Daisy Jones & The Six? There are two sets of brothers in The Six: Eddie and Pete Loving, and Billy and Graham Dunne. How do these sibling relationships affect the band? Daisy, Camila, Simone, and Karen are each very different embodiments of female strength and creativity. Who are you most drawn to and why? Billy and Daisy become polarizing figures for the band. Who in the book gravitates more toward Billy’s leadership, and who is more inclined to follow Daisy’s way of doing things? How do these alliances change over time, and how does this dynamic upset the group’s balance? Why do you think Billy and Daisy clash so strongly? What misunderstandings between them are revealed through the “author’s” investigation? What do you think of Camila’s decision to stand by Billy, despite the ways that he has hurt her through his trouble with addiction and wavering faithfulness?

Jason Zweig, senior writer and columnist at Money magazine and coauthor of the revised edition of Benjamin Graham's classic, The Intelligent Investor: "If you buy-and then hold-a total stock market index fund, it is mathematically certain that you will outperform the vast majority of all other investors in the long run. Graham praised index funds as the best choice for individual investors, as does Warren Buffett.

A Good Start in Financial History You really can’t learn enough financial history. The following, listed in descending order of importance, are landmarks in the field. Edward Chancellor. Devil Take the Hindmost. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1999. What manias look like; how to recognize—and hopefully avoid—irrational exuberance. Benjamin Roth. The Great Depression: A Diary. New York: PublicAffairs, 2009. What the bottoms look like; how to keep your courage and your cash up. Roger G. Ibbotson and Gary P. Brinson. Global Investing. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993. Five hundred years of hard and fiat money, inflation, and security returns in a small, easy-to-read package. Adam Fergusson. When Money Dies. New York: PublicAffairs, 2010; Frederick Taylor. The Downfall of Money. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2013. What real inflation looks like. Be afraid, very afraid. Benjamin Graham. Security Analysis. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1996. You’re not a pro until you’ve read Graham “in the original”—the first edition, published in 1934. An authentic copy in decent condition will run you at least a grand. Fortunately, McGraw-Hill brought out a facsimile reprint in 1996. Charles Mackay. Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Petersfield, U.K.: Harriman House Ltd., 2003. If you were smitten with Devil Take the Hindmost, you’ll love this nineteenth-century look at earlier manias. Sydney Homer and Richard Sylla. A History of Interest Rates, 4th ed. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2005. Loan markets from 35th-century B.C. Sumer to the present.

We are spiritual beings having a human experience,” writes Inspirational author Madyson Taylor. “As children, most of us know this, but other human beings who have forgotten what they really are and who cannot help us to know ourselves train us to forget. As a result, we are led to believe that magic is not real, that our invisible playmates do not really exist, and that we are limited beings with only one earthly life to live. There is enormous pressure to conform to this concept of ourselves and so we lose touch with our full potential, forgetting that we are beings of light ... It is through our connection to this light that we know things beyond what the visible world can tell us, and we see things beyond what the physical world reveals.