Neil Diamond Quotes

Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.

Together we made our way down to the street level. Neither of us said a word. The music was awful--Neil Diamond or something. I should've made that part of my gift form the gods: better elevator tunes.

When you die, they can make you into diamonds now. It’s scientific. That’s how I want to be remembered. I want to shine.

And each one there has one thing shared; They have sweated beneath the same sun, Look up in wonder at the same moon, And wept when it was all done, For being done too soon.

Soon enough his head would be swimming with tales of derring-do and high adventure, tales of beautiful maidens kissed, of evildoers shot with pistols or fought with swords, of bags of gold, of diamonds as big as the tip of your thumb, of lost cities and of vast mountains, of steam-trains and clipper ships, of pampas, oceans, deserts, tundra.

I am," I said To no one there An no one heard at all Not even the chair "I am," I cried "I am," said I And I am lost, and I can't even say why Leavin' me lonely still

One year later, I got beat up at a Neil Diamond concert by a guy named Scrunchie!

BE Lost On a painted sky Where the clouds are hung For the poet's eye You may find him If you may find him There On a distant shore By the wings of dreams Through an open door You may know him If you may

For a time he read his Neil Diamond bible by the firelight. He paused, twisting nervously at his goatee, considering the law in Deuteronomy that forbade clothes with mixed fibers. A problematic bit of Scripture. A matter that required thought. "Only the devil wants man to have a wide range of lightweight and comfortable styles to choose from," he murmured at last, trying out a new proverb. "Although there may be no forgiveness for polyester. On this matter, Satan and the Lord are in agreement.

Do not be jealous of your sister. Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut.

B is for boat, pushing off into the dark. C is the way that we find and we look. D is for diamonds, the bait on the hook.

She began to whisper something in my ear. It’s the strangest thing about poetry—you can tell it’s poetry, even if you don’t speak the language. You can hear Homer’s Greek without understanding a word, and you still know it’s poetry. I’ve heard Polish poetry, and Inuit poetry, and I knew what it was without knowing. Her whisper was like that. I didn’t know the language, but her words washed through me, perfect, and in my mind’s eye I saw towers of glass and diamond; and people with eyes of the palest green; and, unstoppable, beneath every syllable, I could feel the relentless advance of the ocean.

Richard had met Jessica in France, on a weekend trip to Paris two years earlier; had in fact discovered her in the Louvre, trying to find the group of his office friends who had organized the trip. Staring up at an immense sculpture, he had stepped backwards into Jessica, who was admiring an extremely large and historically important diamond. He tried to apologize to her in French, which he did not speak, gave up, and began to apologize in English, then tried to apologize in French for having to apologize in English, until he noticed that Jessica was about as English as it was possible for any one person to be.

It’s just a two-man con,” said Shadow. “Like the bishop and the diamond necklace and the cop. Like the guy with the fiddle, and the guy who wants to buy the fiddle, and the poor sap in between them who pays for the fiddle. Two men, who appear to be on opposite sides, playing the same game.

Well. You think Salman Rushdie got into trouble. It turns out that Neil Diamond has a great many serious fans out there, and virtually every one of them took the time to send me an extremely hostile, spittle-flecked letter.

The other thing that I would say about writer's block is that it can be very, very subjective. By which I mean, you can have one of those days when you sit down and every word is crap. It is awful. You cannot understand how or why you are writing, what gave you the illusion or delusion that you would every have anything to say that anybody would ever want to listen to. You're not quite sure why you're wasting your time. And if there is one thing you're sure of, it's that everything that is being written that day is rubbish. I would also note that on those days (especially if deadlines and things are involved) is that I keep writing. The following day, when I actually come to look at what has been written, I will usually look at what I did the day before, and think, "That's not quite as bad as I remember. All I need to do is delete that line and move that sentence around and its fairly usable. It's not that bad." What is really sad and nightmarish (and I should add, completely unfair, in every way. And I mean it -- utterly, utterly, unfair!) is that two years later, or three years later, although you will remember very well, very clearly, that there was a point in this particular scene when you hit a horrible Writer's Block from Hell, and you will also remember there was point in this particular scene where you were writing and the words dripped like magic diamonds from your fingers -- as if the Gods were speaking through you and every sentence was a thing of beauty and magic and brilliance. You can remember just as clearly that there was a point in the story, in that same scene, when the characters had turned into pathetic cardboard cut-outs and nothing they said mattered at all. You remember this very, very clearly. The problem is you are now doing a reading and you cannot for the life of you remember which bits were the gifts of the Gods and dripped from your fingers like magical words and which bits were the nightmare things you just barely created and got down on paper somehow!! Which I consider most unfair. As a writer, you feel like one or the other should be better. I wouldn't mind which. I'm not somebody who's saying, "I really wish the stuff from the Gods was better." I wouldn't mind which way it went. I would just like one of them to be better. Rather than when it's a few years later, and you're reading the scene out loud and you don't know, and you cannot tell. It's obviously all written by the same person and it all gets the same kind of reaction from an audience. No one leaps up to say, "Oh look, that paragraph was clearly written on an 'off' day." It is very unfair. I don't think anybody who isn't a writer would ever understand how quite unfair it is.

Yes. Neil Diamond had literally given her the shirt off his back. Why do these people mean so much to me? Because people inspire people. And over the years, they've all become a part of my DNA. In some way I've been shaped by each and every note I've heard them play. Memories have been painted in my mind with their voices as the frame.

If an eagle gives you a feather, keep it safe. Remember: that giants sleep too soundly; that witches are often betrayed by their appetites; dragons have one soft spot, somewhere, always; hearts can be well-hidden, and you betray them with your tongue. Do not be jealous of your sister. Know that diamonds and roses are as uncomfortable when they tumble from one's lips as toads and frogs: colder, too, and sharper, and they cut. Remember your name. Do not lose hope -- what you seek will be found. Trust ghosts. Trust those that you have helped to help you in their turn. Trust dreams. Trust your heart, and trust your story. When you come back, return the way you came. Favors will be returned, debts be repaid. Do not forget your manners. Do not look back. Ride the wise eagle (you shall not fall). Ride the silver fish (you will not drown). Ride the grey wolf (hold tightly to his fur). There is a worm at the heart of the tower; that is why it will not stand. When you reach the little house, the place your journey started, you will recognize it, although it will seem much smaller than you remember. Walk up the path, and through the garden gate you never saw before but once. And then go home. Or make a home. Or rest.

For a time he read his Neil Diamond Bible by the firelight. He paused, twisting nervously at his goatee, considering the law in Deuteronomy that forbade clothes with mixed fibers. A problematic bit of Scripture. A matter that required thought. “Only the devil wants man to have a wide range of lightweight and comfortable styles to choose from,” he murmured at last, trying out a new proverb. “Although there may be no forgiveness for polyester. On this one matter, Satan and the Lord are in agreement.

Yet this great plain of numbness was not the worst place to be. Numbness was a mere purgatory of gray. No, there was a much worse place. Darkness masquerading as enlightenment. It was a place of royal blue studded with diamond that glistened like stars.

I would go to India for you, Victoria Forester, and bring you the tusks of elephants, and pearls as big as your thumb, and rubies the size of wren’s eggs. ‘I would go to Africa, and bring you diamonds the size of cricket balls. I would find the source of the Nile, and name it after you. ‘I would go to America – all the way to San Francisco, to the gold-fields, and I would not come back until I had your weight in gold. Then I would carry it back here, and lay it at your feet. ‘I would travel to the distant northlands did you but say the word, and slay the mighty polar bears, and bring you back their hides.’ ‘I

The café smelled—not unpleasantly—of grease and beans and frying meat. Neil Diamond was on the jukebox, singing “I Am, I Said” in Spanish. The specials (which weren’t very) were posted behind the counter. Above the kitchen pass-through was a defaced photograph of Donald Trump. His blond hair had been colored black; he had been given a forelock and a mustache. Below it someone had printed Yanqui vete a casa: Yankee go home. At first Ralph was surprised—Texas was a red state, after all, as red as they came—but then he remembered that if whites weren’t the actual minority this near to the border, it was a close-run thing.

Some of you have a big bag of shit you’re carrying around. And every time you encounter a situation in which you can possibly get more shit to put in the bag, you grab it and stuff it inside. You’ll even ignore all the diamonds glittering nearby, because all you can see is the shit. This shit is known as “the stories you tell yourself.” Examples include generalizations like “I make bad decisions,” “If people saw the real me, they wouldn’t like me,” or, conversely, “No one is good enough for me.” Each of these beliefs can be formed in childhood by, respectively, fault-finding parents, abandoning parents, and parents who put you on a pedestal. As a result, you can spend much of your life misinterpreting situations and thinking you’ve found more evidence to support these false conclusions formed in childhood. One

Tristran tugged and pulled out the stopper of the bottle. He could smell something intoxicating, like honey mixed with wood smoke and cloves. He passed the bottle back to the little man. “It’s a crime to drink something as rare and good as this out of the bottle,” said the little hairy man. He untied the little wooden cup from his belt and, trembling, poured a small amount of an amber-colored liquid into it. He sniffed it, then sipped it, then he smiled, with small, sharp teeth. “Aaaahhhh. That’s better.” He passed the cup to Tristran. “Sip it slowly,” he said. “It’s worth a king’s ransom, this bottle. It cost me two large blue-white diamonds, a mechanical bluebird which sang, and a dragon’s scale.” Tristran sipped the drink. It warmed him down to his toes and made him feel like his head was filled with tiny bubbles. “Good, eh?” Tristran nodded. “Too good for the likes of you and me, I’m afraid. Still. It hits the spot in times of trouble, of which this is certainly one.

For the bus ride, which Delaney estimated would be ninety minutes, she had prepared a mix of happy journeying music, which she activated as they pulled out of the campus gate. The first song was by Otis Redding, and the first message came via her phone. Woman-hater, it said, with a link to an unsigned and evidence-less post hinting that he had been unkind to an ex-girlfriend who he’d met shortly before the bay and the dock and the sitting. Thanks for the early-morning pick-me-up! the writer said, meaning that Delaney had ruined the day and tacitly endorsed Redding’s newly alleged misogyny. Delaney skipped to the next song, Lana Del Rey’s “High by the Beach,” and then quickly figured it was too big a risk so skipped ahead. The third song, the Muppets’ “Movin’ Right Along,” was unknown to most on the bus, and survived its three-minute length, during which a handful of passengers furiously tried to find a reason the song was complicit in evil committed or implied. Delaney skipped the next song, by Neil Diamond, thinking any Jewish singer dubious in light of the Israeli sandwich debacle, skipped songs six and seven (from Thriller), briefly considered the Ronettes’ “Be My Baby” but then remembered Phil Spector, and so finally settled on a young Ghanian rapper she’d recently discovered. His first song was hunted down quickly in a hail of rhetorical buckshot—as a teen, the rapper had zinged a borderline joke about his female trigonometry teacher—so Delaney turned off the shared music, leaving everyone, for the next eighty-one minutes, to their earbuds and the safety of their individualized solitude.

Thrasher" They were hiding behind hay bales, They were planting in the full moon They had given all they had for something new But the light of day was on them, They could see the thrashers coming And the water shone like diamonds in the dew. And I was just getting up, hit the road before it's light Trying to catch an hour on the sun When I saw those thrashers rolling by, Looking more than two lanes wide I was feelin' like my day had just begun. Where the eagle glides ascending There's an ancient river bending Down the timeless gorge of changes Where sleeplessness awaits I searched out my companions, Who were lost in crystal canyons When the aimless blade of science Slashed the pearly gates. It was then I knew I'd had enough, Burned my credit card for fuel Headed out to where the pavement turns to sand With a one-way ticket to the land of truth And my suitcase in my hand How I lost my friends I still don't understand. They had the best selection, They were poisoned with protection There was nothing that they needed, Nothing left to find They were lost in rock formations Or became park bench mutations On the sidewalks and in the stations They were waiting, waiting. So I got bored and left them there, They were just deadweight to me Better down the road without that load Brings back the time when I was eight or nine I was watchin' my mama's T.V., It was that great Grand Canyon rescue episode. Where the vulture glides descending On an asphalt highway bending Thru libraries and museums, galaxies and stars Down the windy halls of friendship To the rose clipped by the bullwhip The motel of lost companions Waits with heated pool and bar. But me I'm not stopping there, Got my own row left to hoe Just another line in the field of time When the thrasher comes, I'll be stuck in the sun Like the dinosaurs in shrines But I'll know the time has come To give what's mine. Neil Young, Rust Never Sleeps (1979)

The art of love is who you share it with.

First I tried some Neil Diamond, thinking that if anything was going to make the undead run for the hills it would be a nice, loud rendition of Cracklin’ Rosie. But those coldsickles actually seemed to enjoy it. Very disturbing.

Forever In Blue Jeans" Money talks But it don't sing and dance And it don't walk And long as I can have you Here with me, I'd much rather be Forever in blue jeans Honey's sweet But it ain't nothin' next to baby's treat And if you pardon me I'd like to say We'll do okay Forever in blue jeans Maybe tonight Maybe tonight, by the fire All alone you and I Nothing around But the sound of my heart And your sighs Money talks But it can't sing and dance And it can't walk And long as I can have you Here with me, I'd much rather be Forever in blue jeans, babe And honey's sweet But it ain't nothin' next to baby's treat And if you pardon me I'd like to say We'll do okay Forever in blue jeans Maybe tonight Maybe tonight, by the fire All alone you and I Nothing around But the sound of my heart And your sighs Money talks But it can't sing and dance And it can't walk And long as I can have you Here with me I'd much rather be Forever in blue jeans And if you pardon me I'd like to say We'll do okay Forever in blue jeans, babe And long as I can have you Here with me I'd much rather be Forever in blue jeans, babe

Performing is the easiest part of what I do, and songwriting is the hardest.” —Neil Diamond

There were protocols to meet for the historic occasion. On the lunar dust they placed mementoes for the five-deceased American and Soviet spacemen, Gus Grissom, Ed White, Roger Chaffee, Vladimir Komarov, and Yuri Gagarin (who died in a plane crash in 1968). They unsheathed a metal disc on the descent stage with engraved messages to future moon visitors. As Neil Armstrong read the plaque’s words, his voice carried throughout the world. “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969, AD. We came in peace for all mankind.” There was yet another small cargo—private and precious—carried by Neil Armstrong to the moon. It was not divulged at the time, but he carried the diamond-studded astronaut pin made especially for Deke Slayton by the three Apollo 1 astronauts and presented to him by their widows after that dreadful fire.

She finished with the draft and sauntered—Lorraine never walked, she sauntered—toward the corner of the bar where they kept the good stuff. Broome spun around on the stool. There was a line at the buffet. An actual line for the food. On the stage a girl danced with the enthusiasm of a coma patient. The old Neil Diamond classic “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon” played through the speaker system. Lorraine

You can also assign different signs to different people on the Other Side. You could ask your grandmother to send you a pink heart with the word LOVE on it—and your grandpa to send a blue hippo. You can ask your spirit guides to send you the number 555. It’s all up to you to create the language you will share with them. And the more signs you create and establish, the more fluid the language will become. The phrase love you more. The number 333. Neil Diamond’s “Sweet Caroline.” A bee. The more signs you create, the more expansive the language will become. So maybe we can’t share a cup of coffee with a loved one who has crossed. But we can share a lovely moment of feeling close again. All we have to do is ask.

Breaking my promise Spectacularly failing I blame Neil Diamond

Simon Helberg: Mayim and I had this unspoken connection, and I know how rare that is. And you better believe I listened to Neil Diamond in the car on the way to work every day that week. Anytime I had anything like that, I just drilled it into my head; sometimes to an unhealthy extent, but I tried to be 100 percent fully immersed.

Across Europe, conservatives alarmed by the rise of labour were discovering antidotes in nationalism, racism, and jingoism. Intellectuals, politicians, industrialists, and empire-builders embraced the idea that the masses – the dark, threatening masses stirring in the social depths – could perhaps be distracted by a new kind of ‘bread and circuses’: the glory of empire. French philologist, philosopher, and historian Ernest Renan was explicit: it was ‘the only way to counter socialism’, and ‘a nation that does not colonise is condemned to end up with socialism, to experience a war between rich and poor’. Cecil Rhodes, the diamond magnate and colonial pioneer who did more than anyone to establish British imperial rule in Southern Africa, found himself thinking along precisely these lines after witnessing a rowdy meeting of the unemployed in East London. ‘On my way home,’ he later recalled, ‘I pondered over the scene, and I became more than ever convinced of the importance of imperialism … The Empire, as I have always said, is a bread and butter question. If you want to avoid civil war, you must become imperialists.

De blanke neus kleurt bleek in het naseizoen.

You’re right,” I said. “It’s not up there with Neil Diamond at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center. I can’t believe this is my life.” “Then you need to do something about it,” he said. “So you don’t think that if I whine loud enough, God will hear me?” “It hasn’t worked so far.” “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say that,” I said.