Tired Old Words

Caught With A Smoking Nun!

“Home . . . is where I want to be. Pick me up and take me there.”
—Talking Heads, Naive Melody

“She said she’d stick around till the bandages came off,
but these mama’s boys just don’t know when to quit.”
—Tom Waits, Hang Down Your Head

“Give me a lever and a fulcrum, and I can move the world.”
—Archimedes

“Alfred Nobel gave us a lever.”
—Che Guevara

“His skin was dry as paper, so the hornets built a nest.”

“Because to clean the tub, you would have to be both in the tub and out of the tub at the same time, and you can’t be in two places at once.”

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”
—Hunter S. Thompson

“We don’t report the news. We write it.”
—William S. Burroughs

“Down at Club Limbo, they still play Stardust.”
—Club Limbo, The Inevitable Squirrel Nut Zippers

“Everyone with any sense had already left town.”
—Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts, Bob Dylan

“He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct.”
—Apocalypse Now

“Sometimes I get lonesome for Lafayette—
Someday I’m going home, but I ain’t ready yet.”
—Steve Earle, Telephone Road

“Though all the streets are crowded
There’s something strange about it
I lived there ’bout a year and I never once felt at home

I thought I’d make the big time,
I learned a lot of lessons awful quick and now I’m
telling you that they were not the nice kind
It’s been so long since I have felt fine

That’s the reason that I gotta get out of here
I’m so alone
Don’t you know that I gotta get out of here
’Cause New York’s not my home.”

—Jim Croce, New York’s Not My Home

Me, I’m still on the road
Heading for another joint . . .

—Bob Dylan, Tangled Up in Blue

8/1/2000: “Daddy don't live in that New York City no more.”

—Steely Dan, Katy Lied

“Lido missed the boat that day he left the shack—
But that was all he missed, and he ain’t comin’ back.”

—Boz Scaggs, Lido Shuffle

“Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack
I went out for a ride, and I never went back
Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going”

—Bruce Springsteen, Hungry Heart

“I’m a 21st century digital boy
I don’t know how to live but I’ve got a lot of toys”

—Bad Religion, Digital Boy (1990)