Harry Chapin Quotes

He was dancing to some music No one else had ever heard He'd speak in unknown languages She would translate every word And then when the world was laughing At his castles in the sky She'd hold him in her body Till he once again could fly.

I went to sleep with the hope that made America famous. I had the kind of a dream that maybe they're still trying to teach in school. Of the America that made America famous ... and Of the people who just might understand That how together yes we can Create a country better than The one we have made of this land, We have a choice to make each man who dares to dream, reaching out his hand A prophet or just a crazy God damn Dreamer of a fool

If a man tried to take his time on earth and prove before he died, what one man's life could be worth, well I wonder what would happen to this world?

You see, dream-lover of a lady, what shakes me to the core Is the thought as you caress me, you've done this all before I think about the future with me out and others in Will I, too, have disappeared like I've never ever been?

It's got to be the going, not the getting there, that's good.

But you can travel on for ten thousand miles, and still stay where you are.

The reason I fight for the arts as well as against hunger is because the arts are the qualitative way, are the effective way, are the traditional way we learn to make value decisions about who and what we are.

The very day I purchased it, I christened my guitar as my monophonic symphony, six string orchestra.

You know I need a dream Like I need my breath We need to take the life Before we get the death You know I need your love Like I need the light Yes I need the chance Can it be tonight?

I'm in the Dance Band on the Titanic Singing "Nearer my God to thee" and the icebergs on the starboard bow Won't you dance with me?

I never really drove a cab, but I do have a hack license in case of emergencies - like no money.

Hello my Country I once came to tell everyone your story Your passion was my poetry And your past my most potent glory Your promise was my prayer Your hypocrisy my nightmare And your problems fill my present Are we both going somewhere?

Oh all the times I've listened, and all the times I've heard All the melodies I'm missing, and all the magic words, And all those potent voices, and the choices we had then, How I'd love to find we had that kind of choice again.

To know is to care, to care is to act, to act is to make a difference.

Our lives are to be used and thus to be lived as fully as possible, and truly it seems that we are never so alive as when we concern ourselves with other people.

She sings the songs without words Songs that sailors, and blind men, and beggars have heard She knows more of love than the poets can say And her eyes are for something that won't go away.

What is needed is a marriage of two impulses, a coupling of the urge to do something positive with the willingness to constantly re-evaluate how effectively our actions lead to our goal - that of ending world hunger ...

We all have the potential to move the world, and the world is ready to be moved.

What I'd really like, Dad, is to borrow the car keys.

You see, she was gonna be an actress and I was gonna learn to fly. She took off to find the footlights, and I took off for the sky. And here, she's acting happy, inside her handsome home. And me, I'm flying in my taxi, taking tips, and getting stoned. I go flying so high, when I'm stoned.

When I started this song I was still thirty-three The age that Mozart died and sweet Jesus was set free Keats and Shelley too soon finished, Charley Parker would be And I fantasized some tragedy'd be soon curtailing me Well just today I had my birthday I made it thirty-four Mere mortal, not immortal, not star-crossed anymore I've got this problem with my aging I no longer can ignore A tame and toothless tabby can't produce a lion's roar.

Be involved with the people with the live hearts, the live eyes, who are committed to something.

But high up on the mountain When the wind is hitting it If you're watching very closely The rock slips a little bit ...

I come fresh from the street, fast on my feet, kind a lean and lazy; not much meat on my bones, and a whole lot alone, and more than a little bit crazy. The old six string was all I had to keep my belly still, and for each full hour lesson I gave I got a crisp ten dollar bill.

There are so many colors in the rainbow
So many colors in the morning sun
So many colors in the flower and I see every one.

There are lessons to life That the lovers got to learn There are corners out there You know they're waitin' somewhere And you've got to be prepared to turn There are callouses that come That the lovers got to earn In the years of your youth You can't be fire proof You know you've got to get burned.

If we say that no one's out there And we say we're goin' nowhere And we avoid the question Is this all that it means?

Flowers are red, and green leaves are green. There's no need to see flowers any other way than the way they always have been seen.

And the wind will whip your tousled hair, The sun, the rain, the sweet despair, Great tales of love and strife. And somewhere on your path to glory You will write your story of a life.

And while blood's the only language that your deaf old ears can hear And still you will not answer with that message coming clear Does it mean there's no more ripples in your tired old glory stream And the buzzards own the carcass of your dream?

Reality is only just a word.

Oh, he was the sun burning bright and brittle And she was the moon shining back his light a little He was a shooting star She was softer and more slowly He could not make things possible But, she could make them holy.

I found you a thousand times; I guess you done the same; But then we lose each other; It's like a children's game; As I find you here again; A thought runs through my mind; Our love is like a circle; Let's go 'round one more time.

I guess it's a sequel to our story From the journey 'tween heaven and hell With half the time thinking of what might have been and half thinkin' just as well. I guess only time will tell.

I believe that success brings responsibility. It also does not bring immunity to the consequences of our quickening march towards oblivion. The bottom line is that all of us should be invovled in our own futures to create a world that our children will want to live in.

I've got nothing against selling out, but just let me do it for something that matters. Not so I can be Number One With a Bullet, as it were, but so I can leave this world feeling like I made a difference.

There's a vacancy, won't you come to me And fill my empty spaces I'm a motel man in a promised land That's filled with empty faces So won't you bring your sorrows bring your dreams, It's a place for you to be There's no more tomorrow or that's how it seems Won't you come to me? I've got a vacancy

She was married for seven years to a concrete castle king. She said she wanted to learn to play the guitar and to hear her children sing. So I'd show up about once a week in my faded tight-legged jeans with a backlog full of hobo stories and dilapidated dreams.

All my life's a circle; But I can't tell you why; Season's spinning round again; The years keep rollin' by.