Michael Learns To Rock Quotes

I was tired of well-meaning folks, telling me it was time I got over being heartbroke. When somebody tells you that, a little bell ought to ding in your mind. Some people don't know grief from garlic grits. There's somethings a body ain't meant to get over. No I'm not suggesting you wallow in sorrow, or let it drag on; no I am just saying it never really goes away. (A death in the family) is like having a pile of rocks dumped in your front yard. Every day you walk out and see them rocks. They're sharp and ugly and heavy. You just learn to live around them the best way you can. Some people plant moss or ivy; some leave it be. Some folks take the rocks one by one, and build a wall.

Rivers age as they go downstream,” Suri told Raithe while they looked at the disagreeable gorge. “That’s what Tura once told me. They start out as tiny trickles, then in their youth and adolescence are like this, boundless energy throwing themselves heedless against unmovable rocks. Then they usually fall. Sometimes it’s a series of tumbles and sometimes one great plummet, but hitting bottom usually takes the fight out of most rivers. After that, they mellow and learn to meander around the rocks they encounter, taking life slower, easier. They spread out and grow quiet until, at last, they flow into the sea, becoming one with something greater.

David turned on the TV and sat on the couch. He could grade the Calc I homework but that always depressed him. It would almost put him in mourning, sitting Shiva, but it had to be done. He would get up early in the morning and do it. He chuckled. The TV had a stupid dog commercial. Cocker Spaniel mix. Same kind of mutt Miriam brought into their marriage. She was a dog person. Named it Lucky. Lucky died of poisoning while David was at home one afternoon. Somehow the dog had gotten into Clorox. Not so lucky. That had been their only fight. David did not want to get another dog. Claimed it would remind him of Lucky. When David was little, about eight or nine years old, he had learned Clorox would kill a dog. Their neighbor had a German shepherd. Sol would throw rocks at it when they walked to school. One day the dog got out and bit Sol, and if the neighbors had not stopped it, the dog may have mauled Sol to death. The dog’s name was Roxx, short for Roxanne. It was found dead a couple of days later. Poisoned. David was not a dog person.

Fractals are a kind of geometry, associated with a man named Mandelbrot. Unlike ordinary Euclidean geometry that everybody learns in school—squares and cubes and spheres—fractal geometry appears to describe real objects in the natural world. Mountains and clouds are fractal shapes. So fractals are probably related to reality. Somehow. “Well, Mandelbrot found a remarkable thing with his geometric tools. He found that things looked almost identical at different scales.” “At different scales?” Grant said. “For example,” Malcolm said, “a big mountain, seen from far away, has a certain rugged mountain shape. If you get closer, and examine a small peak of the big mountain, it will have the same mountain shape. In fact, you can go all the way down the scale to a tiny speck of rock, seen under a microscope—it will have the same basic fractal shape as the big mountain.

Let us build a house where love can dwell and all can safely live, a place where saints and children tell how hearts learn to forgive; built of hopes and dreams and visions, rock of faith and vault of grace; here the love of Christ shall end divisions: All are welcome, all are welcome, all are welcome in this place.7

It's Never Too Late for Rock'N'Roll It may be too late to learn ancient Greek Under a canopy of gnats It may be too late to sail to Mozambique With a psychotic cat It may be too late to find a cure Too late to save your soul It may be too late to lose the heat It may be too late to find your feet It may be too late to draw a map To the high desert of your heart It may be too late to lose the poor It’s never too late for rock’n’roll It may be too late to dance like Fred Astaire Or Michael Jackson come to that It may be too late to climb the stair And find the key under your mat It may be too late to think that you’re Never too late for rock’n’roll We have to believe a couple of good thieves can still seize the day We have to believe we can still clear the way We have to believe we’ve found some common ground We have to believe we have to believe We can lose those last twenty pounds

When I watch Björk sing, It's right here, that spot at the top of the forehead. Neil Young is the same. He sings to this spot in his head. And what he's singing, he's already heard. He's hearing it come out. And the same with Björk. When she's singing, she's singing what she's hearing so there's no force. It's a force in itself. What I realised watching Michael Stipe, was that this is someone whose voice is in command of them rather than the other way around. It's very natural but it takes a long time for that to become natural. Like any singer, it takes a long time to find that, and it keeps changing. How I sing now feels different to a few years ago. It's just where you're at. Singing is nothing but being in the moment. That's it. I remember during OK Computer, I still thought "I need to be slightly drunk" or "I need to do something beforehand so that I'm in the right space, man", but it's all bollocks, because basically you just gotta learn to be there with it when you do it. You're not trying to prove anything. You're not trying to get anywhere. You're not trying to achieve anything. You're not trying to get this emotion across. You're not in this space trying to get this space across. You're not trying to get this mindset across or anything. You're just letting it happen.

And then his mouth was on her, his tongue stroking in long, slow licks, curling almost unbearably at the place where pleasure pooled and strained and begged for release. She cried out, sitting up straight before he lifted his head and pressed one large hand to her soft stomach. "Lie back... let me taste you. Let me show you how good it can be. Watch. Tell me what you like. What you need." And she did, God help her. As he licked and sucked with his perfect tongue and his wicked lips, she whispered her encouragement, learning what she wanted even as she was not sure of the end result. More, Michael.... Her hands slid into his curls, holding him close to her. Michael, again... Her thighs widened, willing and wanton. There, Michael... Michael... He was her world. There was nothing beyond this moment. And then his fingers joined his tongue, and she thought she might die as he pressed more firmly, rubbed more deliberately, giving her everything for which she did not know to ask. Her eyes flew open, his name on a gasp. His tongue moved faster, circling at the place where she needed him, and she moved, all inhibitions gone, lost to the rising, cresting pleasure... wanting nothing more than to know what lay beyond. "Please, don't stop," she whispered. He didn't. With his name on her lips, she threw herself over the edge, rocking against him, pressing to him, begging for more even as he gave it to her with tongue and lips and fingers until she lost awareness of everything but the bold, brilliant pleasure he gave her. As she floated back from her climax, he pressed long lovely kisses to the inside of her thighs until she sighed his name and reached for his soft mahogany curls, wanting nothing more than to lie next to him for an hour... a day... a lifetime. He stilled at her touch as her fingers sifted through his hair, and they remained that way for long moments. She was limp with pleasure, her whole world in the feel of his silken curls in her hands, in the scrape of his beard at the soft skin of her thigh.

Don't show me the evil sides of the world

Fugazi’s particularly dogmatic slant emphasized pragmatism, modesty, and fair play—not the first concepts to come to mind when discussing the indisputably punk rock Sex Pistols, for example. Far from complicating their lives, Fugazi’s conditions actually simplified things. If no club in a particular city could agree to Fugazi’s terms, the band would simply skip that town. Occasionally the band would pull up to a club and learn that their conditions had not been met. And they’d start packing the van back up. Sometimes the promoter would relent, sometimes not. If not, he or she would get a good, long look at the band van’s taillights. “The power of ‘No,’ man, that’s the biggest bat we’ve ever wielded,” says Picciotto. “If it makes you uncomfortable, just fuckin’ say no. It’s made life so much easier for us, man. I think bands are fragile, particularly our band—we’re super fragile, we’re control freaks—if things upset us, we can’t deliver…. That’s what it’s about—all this shit, just setting it up so we can go out and play without cares, man. It eliminates everything. It just slashes through all that crap.

Charles Spurgeon once said, “I have learned to kiss the waves that throw me up against the Rock of Ages” [45]. Life is inconsistent, the planet itself turns infernally. The waves of time beat against the rocky shores of our lives, as we age to sand through every fleeting trial and experience. The only constant is change. And change, by definition, means inconsistency: highs and lows, good times and bad ones, safety and accidents, tragedy and triumph. On this earth, hope, joy, and peace are temporary things. They come one moment and recede the next, battering the shores of our lives with taunting impermanence.

If this accident were a wave, I did not think there would ever be a way I could learn to kiss it. Yet it was in that very place of peril, as I was dashed against a rock, that I met face to face with the Rock of Ages. Hardships can take from our life or they can add to it. Usually, they do both. Hardships produce the inky grey and black pigments which contrast upon the otherwise blank canvas of our lives. The dark, black, empty moments of life are very rarely enjoyable, but they are not worthless. In the hands of a loving God, they can and will serve a purpose.

In fact, I found myself overwhelmed by the computers on this record. I hadn’t played seriously for four years and didn’t even like the sound or feel of my own playing. Perhaps I had been demoralised by the conflict with Roger. Certainly I ended up struggling to play some parts satisfactorily. With time pressure on, I surrendered a number of parts to some of the best session players in Los Angeles, including Jim Keltner and Carmine Appice – an odd feeling, a bit like handing your car over to Michael Schumacher. This was not only a defeatist attitude, but meant I then had to learn the damn drum part to play it live (an experience to file under ‘never ever again’).

After that, they mellow and learn to meander around the rocks they encounter, taking life slower, easier. They spread out and grow quiet until, at last, they flow into the sea, becoming one with something greater.

I like to think that when I complete a novel I learned something along the way.