Mack The Knife Quotes

Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. Thats why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die ,die..

Imagine The Greatest Hits of Bobby Darin minus 'Mack the Knife.' That's what my life would be like without you.

Suzuki Todry sits down next to him [an allusion to this? Now Jenny Diver, ho, ho, yeah, Sukey Tawdry Ooh, Miss Lotte Lenya and old Lucy Brown Oh, the line forms on the right, babe Now that Macky's back in town — Bertolt Brecht, “Mack the Knife,” 1928]

A few years ago I read The Closing of the American Mind by Allan Bloom. I was startled by his claim that many modern American ideas actually have their roots in old European philosophies. In particular I was surprised that the song “Mack the Knife” was a translation of a German song, “Mackie Messer,” whose inspiration Bloom traces to a murderer’s “joy of the knife” that Nietzsche describes in Thus Spake Zarathrusta. Most of us like to think that our ideas are our own—or at least, if they were proposed by someone else, that we only agreed to them after conscious review and assent. It’s unnerving to think, as Bloom maintained, that many of our important ideas about the way the world works were simply picked up unreflectively from the cultural milieu in which we found ourselves.

Not enough. Not enough. Not enough. When will I be enough? It's a question I've been asking myself for years, a knife lodged in my chest, twisting itself deeper each time I dare ask. But the pain is nothing compared to the question I find myself asking right now. Why am I not enough for myself?