Quotations

"Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it. My elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me – and if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world."

— Utah Phillips, American singer, died May 23, 2008

"If God has allowed me to earn so much money, it is because He knows I give it all away."

— Edith Piaf, French cabaret singer, died October 10, 1963

"I want to make people cry even when they don't understand my words."

— Edith Piaf, French singer, born December 19, 1915

"I always thought my days spent in darkness [as a child she had cataracts and was unable to see for nearly four years] gave me a very special sensitivity. Much later, when I really wanted to hear, really 'see' a song, I'd close my eyes, and when I wanted to bring it out of the very depths of myself, out of my guts, out of my belly, when the song had to come from far away, I'd close my eyes."

— Edith Piaf, French singer, born December 19, 1915

"When you teach a child something you take away forever his chance of discovering it for himself."

— Jean Piaget, Swiss psychologist, died September 16, 1980

"Pain has its reasons, pleasure is totally indifferent."

— Francis Picabia, French painter, born January 22, 1879

"God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant, and the cat. He has no real style. He just goes on trying other things."

— Pablo Picasso, Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist, died April 8, 1973

"You see these thick curtains shut out the daylight: artificial light suits me a great deal better; it's absolutely steady, and much more exciting."

— Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist, born October 25, 1881

"It takes a long time to become young."

— Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist, born October 25, 1881

"Computers are useless. They can only give you answers."

— Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist, born October 25, 1881

"Art is a lie that makes us realize truth."

— Pablo Picasso, Spanish artist, born October 25, 1881

"Shelby believed that love was like a solar eclipse - breathtakingly beautiful, absorbing, and capable of rendering you blind. She had not necessarily gone out of her way to avoid a relationship, but she hadn't wanted on either. It was called falling in love for a reason - because, inevitably, you crashed at the bottom."

— Jodi Picoult, American author, born May 19, 1966

"Never doubt that you can change history. You already have."

— Marge Piercy, American poet, born 1936

"My strength and my weakness are twins in the same womb."

— Marge Piercy, American poet, born 1936