Dave

“James Brown hid everything, and in the game of instant information he lost big-time, because the information machine turns a truth into a lie and a lie into the truth, transforms superstitions and stereotypes into fact with such ease and fluidity that after a while you get to believing as I do, that the media is not a reflection of the American culture but rather is teaching it. As long as James Brown was selling records he let that craziness run. He didn't care. The media worked in his favor and helped fuel his success. But it killed his public reputation and once the success was gone once the head disappeared, the body followed.”
― James McBride, Kill 'Em and Leave: Searching for James Brown and the American Soul

“I'm a bluesman moving through a blues-soaked America, a blues-soaked world, a planet where catastrophe and celebration- joy and pain sit side by side. The blues started off in some field, some plantation, in some mind, in some imagination, in some heart. The blues blew over to the next plantation, and then the next state. The blues went south to north, got electrified and even sanctified. The blues got mixed up with jazz and gospel and rock and roll.”
― Cornel West, Brother West: Living and Loving Out Loud, A Memoir

“The Homeric Epic does not have to be discovered inside a book; it begins just west of Fort Worth and extends all the way to Santa Monica.”
― James Lee Burke, Wayfaring Stranger

“I'm over the hill for come-on lines. On a quiet day, I can hear my liver rotting. For exercise, I fall down.”
― James Lee Burke, Creole Belle