Odetta Quotes

Odeta Stuikys Rose

It's so easy to lose your fitness and so hard to gain it back.

Walking is the best possible exercise.

Fitness is not an option. It's part of my job.

Health Is Wealth

Your dedication define your success.

The first words which came into Eddie's mind were: “If you think you've gone insane, Odetta, you're nuts”. Brief consideration, however, made this seem an unprof­itable line of argument to take.

She looked out and saw a tall and comely woman beckoning to her. Susannah's first look at Mia in the flesh astounded her, because the chap's mother was *white.* Apparently Odetta-that-was now had a Caucasian side to her personality and how that must frost Detta Walker's racially sensitive butt!

Odetta would have felt pity; Detta felt only the still, coiled readiness of the natural predator.

I am no longer willing to be who you want me to be; I’m going to write my own narrative.

Read. You should read Bukowski and Ferlinghetti, read Sylvia Plath and Anne Sexton, and listen to Coltrane, Nina Simone, Hank Williams, Loretta Lynn, Son House, Robert Johnson, Howlin’ Wolf, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Miles Davis, Lou Reed, Nick Drake, Bobbie Gentry, George Jones, Jimmy Reed, Odetta, Funkadelic, and Woody Guthrie. Drive across America. Ride trains. Fly to countries beyond your comfort zone. Try different things. Join hands across the water. Different foods. New tasks. Different menus and tastes. Talk with the guy who’s working in construction on your block, who’s working on the highway you’re traveling on. Speak with your neighbors. Get to know them. Practice civil disobedience. Try new resistance. Be part of the solution, not the problem. Don’t litter the earth, it’s the only one you have, learn to love her. Care for her. Learn another language. Trust your friends with kindness. You will need them one day. You will need earth one day. Do not fear death. There are worse things than death. Do not fear the reaper. Lie in the sunshine but from time to time let the neon light your way. ZZ Top, Jefferson Airplane, Spirit. Get a haircut. Dye your hair pink or blue. Do it for you. Wear eyeliner. Your eyes are the windows to your soul. Show them off. Wear a feather in your cap. Run around like the Mad Hatter. Perhaps he had the answer. Visit the desert. Go to the zoo. Go to a county fair. Ride the Ferris wheel. Ride a horse. Pet a pig. Ride a donkey. Protest against war. Put a peace symbol on your automobile. Drive a Volkswagen. Slow down for skateboarders. They might have the answers. Eat gingerbread men. Pray to the moon and the stars. God is out there somewhere. Don’t worry. You’ll find out where soon enough. Dance. Even if you don’t know how to dance. Read The Four Agreements. Read the Bible. Read the Bhagavad Gita. Join nothing. It won’t help. No games, no church, no religion, no yellow-brick road, no way to Oz. Wear beads. Watch a caterpillar in the sun.

A kiss. I could do with that, if you don’t mind.” He kissed her long and when their lips no longer touched, she caught his wrist and stared at him intently. “I never made love with a white man before last night,” she said. “I don’t know if that’s important to you or not. I don’t even know if it’s important to me. But I thought you should know.” He considered. “Not to me,” he said. “In the dark, I think we were both gray. I love you, Odetta.” She put a hand over his.

Susannah found herself remembering the time she had asked her father, a quiet but deeply cynical man, if he believed there was a God in heaven who guided the course of human events. Well, he had said, I think it's sort of half'n half, Odetta. I'm sure there's a God but I don't think He has much if anything to do with us these days; I believe that after we killed His son, He finally got it through His head that there wasn't nothing to be done with the sons of Adam or the daughters of Eve, and he washed His hands of us. Wise fella.

You may not be Chosen, but you were born into this realm, shrouded in the veil of the Primals. A Maiden as the Fates promised. And you shall leave this realm touched by life and death,” my old nursemaid Odetta had once said. But, once again, I looked like the Chosen—those third sons and daughters born in a shroud, destined to serve the Primal of Life in his Court. I spent my entire life hidden behind this veil, and even though I had been born in a shroud and treated like most Chosen in many ways, I was also the Maiden. What they were destined to become after Ascension was the highest honor that could be bestowed upon a mortal in any kingdom. Celebrations would be held throughout the lands in preparation for the night of their Rite, where they would Ascend and enter the realm of Iliseeum to serve the Primals and the gods. What I was destined for was the most closely guarded secret in all of Lasania. There were no celebrations and feasts. Tonight, on my seventeenth birthday, I would become the Primal of Death’s Consort. My

No one knew how I’d gained such a gift or why I’d been marked for death before I was even born. It made no sense that I would carry an ability that linked me to the Primal of Life—to Kolis. Had he somehow learned of the deal and imparted me with the gift? Was that what Odetta had meant when she claimed the Arae had said that I was touched by both life and death? He was the King of Gods, after all. I imagined there was very little he didn’t know.

Heart racing, I looked down at my hands. The blood that smeared my palm was dark against my skin. I wiped away what I could in the cool grass beside me. I’d never used my gift on an animal I hadn’t seen pass, and I had never used it on a mortal, even though I’d come close with Odetta. If she hadn’t been alive… I would’ve broken my rule.

Time and ka and trains. I'm thinking about them and many other things. (Lady of Shadows: Dark Tower, The Drawing of the Three)

When Odetta learned that the Primal hadn’t taken me, she had looked at me with rheumy eyes and said, “Death wants nothing to do with life. None of you can be surprised.

Even for years afterward white people would stop me on the street or particularly in Central Park and ask if I was Odetta, a Black folksinger whom I did not resemble at all except that we were both big Black beautiful women with natural heads.