Fillis Mcghee Quotes

You are most powerful when you are most silent. People never expect silence. They expect words, motion, defense, offense, back and forth. They expect to leap into the fray. They are ready, fists up, words hanging leaping from their mouths. Silence? No. ~ Alison McGhee

Blues is not a dream, blues is truth. ~ Brownie McGhee

I've already spent ten years of my life apologizing for that band. As their manager, that's all I really did. Apologize. For years afterward I'd walk into a hotel lobby and the receptionist would call to me, 'Mr. McGhee.' And I'd run up and drop to my knees and say, 'Oh, Jesus, I'm really sorry.'
They'd look at me funny and say, 'No, nothing's wrong. You have a telephone call.'
And I'd breathe a sigh of relief and thank the good Lord above that I wasn't managing Mötley Crüe anymore.

~ Doc McGhee. ~ Motley Crue

Just Me, Just Me
Sweet Marie, she loves just me
(She also loves Maurice McGhee).
No she don't, she loves just me
(She also loves Louise Dupree).
No she don't, she loves just me
(She also loves the willow tree).
No she don't, she loves just me!
(Poor, poor fool, why can't you see
She can love others and still love thee.) ~ Shel Silverstein

It's not dystopia to think history will repeat itself. ~ Mord McGhee

There's a lot of good musicians who are unheard of. Get it down before they pass away. ~ Brownie McGhee

I don't sit here and dream because I don't care about the future. I wouldn't take nothin' for my past and I've got enough behind me that I can write forever. ~ Brownie McGhee

Don't hurt someone who cares about you like that. You're not the only person in the world who's ever been hurt. Don't be cruel. Don't go breaking someone else's heart in the hope that you'll feel better. Becaues you won't. ~ Alison McGhee

When I was hitch-hiking, people had to follow me, 'cause I didn't stay long. ~ Brownie McGhee

That's how we should celebrate all birthdays... with an ass-kicking. ~ Mord McGhee

Your heart literally hurts when it's breaking. You can feel it, every beat another ache, and nothing you can do will stop it, either from beating or breaking. ~ Alison McGhee

I suppose, the natural outgrowth about writing about two friends, it becomes about their friendship, and the complexities of it, and the way personality plays off each other, and what they each like to do, separately and together. ~ Alison McGhee

I met Sonny after (Blind Boy) Fuller died, and me and Sonny played in the streets like everybody else. ~ Brownie McGhee

Early mornings were given over to Bartok and Schoenberg. Midmorning I treated myself to the vocals of Billy Eckstine, Billie Holiday, Nat Cole, Louis Jordan and Bull Moose Jackson. A piroshki from the Russian delicatessen next door was lunch and then the giants of bebop flipped through the air. Charlie Parker and Max Roach, Dizzy Gillespie, Sarah Vaughan and Al Haig and Howard McGhee. Blues belonged to late afternoons and the singers' lyrics of lost love spoke to my solitude. ~ Maya Angelou

When somebody blazes a path to a highway that never end, you should appreciate 'em some. ~ Brownie McGhee

Clara Winter," he said. "You are a word person and don't ever forget it."
He was right. He knew. He could tell. It's something that can be sensed. There's a difference between word-people and non-word-people. ~ Alison McGhee

We all walk around with a stone in our shoe, Younger. William T. ~ Alison McGhee

Air you breathe holds the breath of all things. ~ Alison McGhee

Little boy, you remind me how so much depends of day made of now ~ Alison McGhee

Wouldn't want to miss a war, would I? ~ Alison McGhee

Let me tell you that a girl of eleven is capable of far more than is dreamt of in most universes... ~ Alison McGhee

Are any of us safe? How do we make it through? How, when you know you are going to leave this life whether you want to or not - when you know that you and everyone you love will leave this life - do we make it? I don't want to die. ~ Alison McGhee

I'm a big State Fair person, and my main goal is to eat as much food as possible, but I tend not to do the foods on a stick. But I like Big Fat Bacon. ~ Alison McGhee

I only write about what I do, what happens to me. ~ Brownie McGhee

Everybody would grab a guitar and listen to somebody else and call themselves a folk singer. When they didn't know no more songs, they'd run out of them. ~ Brownie McGhee

If you know how to read, you know how forever. You can't unread. ~ Alison McGhee

What is the matter with these people, these people who won't stop fighting, won't stop hurting each other long enough to see that a body is a thing of beauty, is a miracle of rivers and oceans and islands and continents contained within itself? That the brain is divided into two hemispheres, each symmetrical, each perfect, each with its own system of waterways. These people of war should be shown an x-ray of an intraparenchymal hemorrhage, of a hemorrhage in an eighteen-year-old girl's brain, a girl named Ivy. Take a look at that, people of war. See, you should not hurt each other, and this is why. Without you ever even trying, this is what can happen to your body, your beautiful body, and your brain, your beautiful symmetrical brain, and your heart, and your soul. ~ Alison McGhee

I like to write in all different genres. I just like a new challenge. ~ Alison McGhee

Water seeks its own level. Look at them. The Tigris, the Euphrates, the Mississippi, the Amazon, the Yangtze. The world's great rivers. And every one of them finds its way to the ocean. ~ Alison McGhee

What sorts of books are placed by garbage cans on garbage night in the town of Sterns? Mainly they're old class books, the kind people carry around in boxes in their basements for twenty years and then one day think: I will never again in my entire life open this book and there is no sense in its taking up valuable space in my basement, and they throw them out. Right out by the garbage cans they put them, in cardboard boxes with the bottoms falling out.
Books should not ever be treated that way. It's a sin to treat a book that way. That's what I believe to be true. ~ Alison McGhee

My favorite country blues player was Big Bill Broonzy. City blues was Freddie King, but I liked them all - Muddy Waters, John Lee Hooker, Ralph Willis, Lonnie Johnson, Brownie McGhee and the three Kings, B.B., Albert and Freddie. Jazz-wise, I listened to Django, Barney Kessel and Wes Montgomery. ~ Alvin Lee

I never had the blues; the blues always had me. ~ Brownie McGhee

I got Sonny up to Harlem, and we started street playin' in New York. We did that for three or four years and survived. We brought it back to the streets again. ~ Brownie McGhee

The last thing that the blues needs is another smart-ass white boy with an attitude. ~ Brownie McGhee

And she tried to breathe. ~ Alison McGhee

Curiosity did not kill the cat, but cultivated the kittens. ~ McGhee Steiner

Living without love is worse than dying, Younger. William T. ~ Alison McGhee

'Someone's gonna die before this is over,' I said to Doc McGhee. [...]
'I don't think someone's gonna die, Ozzy. I think we're all gonna die.' ~ Ozzy Osbourne

I was playing with steel picks on a steel guitar, and there was no amplification needed. ~ Brownie McGhee

What, exactly, would you give up? ~ Alison McGhee