Gwion Bach Quotes

Temporal experience is neither completely recurrent (in which case it would be wholly knowable) nor completely variable (in which case it would be wholly inscrutable). In effect, it is more like a piece of complex music, a Bach fugue heard for the first time. In one sense, we are excited and surprised by the novel disposition of tones and rhythms and by the uncanny variety of the treatment. In another sense, we realize that recurring ideas and cycles are what give the work its native character, and that the variations, however stunning, have significance only in terms of their relationship to these underlying themes. Conversely, the recurrent themes are realizable in their fullest sense only through the variations upon them. The careful student of time is thus as sure that certain things will recur as he is sure that they will recur in dazzling new forms. ~ Robert Grudin

As you read a book word by word and page by page, you participate in its creation, just as a cellist playing a Bach suite participates, note by note, in the creation, the coming-to-be, the existence, of the music. And, as you read and re-read, the book of course participates in the creation of you, your thoughts and feelings, the size and temper of your soul. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

It isn't everyday that we want to see a syrupy Van Gogh or hear a piquant fugue by Bach, or make love to a succulent woman, but every day we want to eat; hunger is the recurring desire, the only recurring desire, for sight, sound, sex and power all come to an end, but hunger goes on, and while one might weary of Ravel for ever, one could only ever weary of ravioli for, at most, a day. ~ Luis Fernando Verissimo

There's so much to learn! And just when we think, "I've got it. I really understand what's going on," we're shown a whole new stage set on which to play. ~ Richard Bach

It doesn't take time to change once you understand the problem ... Somebody hands you a rattlesnake, it doesn't take long to drop it, does it? ~ Richard Bach

They weren't even taking me seriously enough to bother removing my guns, which I took as a personal insult. ~ Rachel Bach

He carded his fingers through Bach's gleaming hair. "You're like the sun," he whispered.

"What does that make you?" Bach asked, nuzzling his face into the cradle of Einion's hip and untying his stockings with work-nimble fingers.

"Common as earth."

"More like the moon." Bach sat back on his heels and looked up. His eyes were gravity, night-dark and huge. Einion felt himself about to fall in. "Moving tides with the force of your will, forever holding half of yourself away from the rest of creation, silent and still and seductively changeable. Maddening. Caught in a dance with the sun for all of time." (Einion and Bach from The Prophecy of Ydrys Vega ~ Bran Mydwynter

My friends define a soulmate as a lifelong friend, confidant, support system, and spiritual partner. I believe Richard Bach defined it best as "someone who has locks that fit our keys, and keys to fit our locks. When we feel safe enough to open the locks, our truest selves step out and we can be completely and honestly who we are; we can be loved for who we are and not for who we're pretending to be. Each unveils the best part of the other. No matter what else goes wrong around us, with that one person we're safe in our own paradise. ~ Isma Williams

We can lift ourselves out of ignorance, we can find ourselves as creatures of excellence and intelligence and skill. ~ Richard Bach

Time means nothing.Time is just the way we measure the gaps between not knowing something and knowing it or not doing something and doing it. ~ Richard Bach

I have assigned many of my father's basses to students, without endangering their lives. Also, they do no harm to the fingers. ~ Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach

Monteverdi gives us the full gamut of human pssions in music, the first composer to do so; Beethoven tells us what a terrible struggle it is to transcend human frailties and to aspire to the Godhead; and Mozart shows the kind of music we might hope to hear in heaven. But it is Bach, making music in the Castle of Heaven, who gives us the voice of God - in human form. ~ John Eliot Gardiner

But finally I realized that to me, Godel and Escher and Bach were only shadows cast in different directions by some central solid essence. I tried to construct the central object, and came up with this book. ~ Douglas R. Hofstadter

How do we hold the paradox of giving up our life in order to find it? I believe Chesterton is saying that the more we open our heart to both heartache and hope, the more we can look death in the face and say, "Where is your sting?" (1 Cor. 15:55). We must love all that bears the mark of life: the sound of an owl finch and its call that sounds like the meowing of a kitten. We must love Bach, Ethiopian berbere, and the smell of freshly baked bread. Life is teeming with goodness. We must also experience death and powerlessness, but darkness will not win. Life and love will have the final word. ~ Dan B. Allender

I AM! YOU ARE! AND LOVE: IS ALL: THAT MATTERS! ~ Richard Bach

We think, sometimes, there's not a dragon left. Not one brave knight, not a single princess gliding through secret forests, enchanting deer and butterflies with her smile. What a pleasure to be wrong. Princesses, knights, enchantments and dragons, mystery and adventure ... not only are they here-and-now, they're all that ever lived on earth! Our century, they've changed clothes, of course. Dragons wear government-costumes, today, and failure-suits and disaster-outfits. Society's demons screech, whirl down on us should we lift our eyes from the ground, dare we turn right at corners we've been told to turn left. So crafty have appearances become that princesses and knights can be hidden from each other, can be hidden from themselves. ~ Richard Bach

The best we can do is live our highest right, gracefully as we can, and let the Principle of Coincidence take it from there. Seven ~ Richard Bach

It's a huge Carthusian monastery, stuck down between rocks and sea, where you may imagine me, without white gloves or hair curling, as pale as ever, in a cell with such doors as Paris never had for gates. The cell is the shape of a tall coffin, with an enormous dusty vaulting, a small window ... Bach, my scrawls and waste paper - silence - you could scream - there would still be silence. Indeed, I write to you from a strange place. ~ Frederic Chopin

Surely I'd give it for a nipple a rubber Tacitus
For a rattle bag of broken Bach records
Tack Della Francesca all over its crib
Sew the Greek alphabet on its bib
And build for its playpen a roofless Parthenon ~ Gregory Corso

Hell is a place, a time, a consciousness, in which there is no love. ~ Richard Bach

Sooner or later, those who win are those who think they can. ~ Richard Bach

Music is for people to hear, I can't think of anything else it could be for. Unless you believe in God, and I don't think God really would be all that interested. I'm sure when Bach wrote for the greater glory of God, he really didn't think that God was going to sit down at breakfast and listen to his cantatas. I think he meant for higher purposes than earning a living. ~ Richard Meale

We can start working with time, if you wish, till you can fly the past and the future. And then you will be ready to begin the most difficult, the most powerful, the most fun of all. You will be ready to BEGIN to fly up and know the meaning of kindness and of love ~ Richard Bach

The world is a dream, you say, and it's lovely, sometimes. Sunset. Clouds. Sky."
"No. The image is a dream. The beauty is real. Can you see the difference? ~ Richard Bach

Sometimes when learning comes before experience It doesn't make sense right away. ~ Richard Bach

My first band, Kid Wicked, we did half covers and half originals. ~ Sebastian Bach

Family is not necessarily made of blood, but of those you meet along the way. ~ Richard Bach

An author is a writer who didn't give up. ~ Richard Bach

Care about understanding and before you know it, in just a few decades, you'll have a system of thinking that gives you answers whenever you ask. ~ Richard Bach

Having nothing to do, I am correcting the Paris edition of Bach; not only the engraver's mistakes, but also the mistakes hallowed by those who are supposed to understand Bach (I have no pretensions to understand better, but I do think that sometimes I can guess). ~ Frederic Chopin

One must first learn to fall if one would fly ... ~ Richard Bach

I have a way of finding what is true for me, and it's not finished yet. ~ Richard Bach

I grew up on Bach and Beethoven, and now I'm listening to more modern composers who I can't even name. But since I'm constantly doing music, it's difficult to have that quality time to listen to music and do classical stuff. ~ A.R. Rahman

Why fear death? It is the most beautiful adventure in life. ~ Charles Frahman

I liked Bach played the way people expect Chopin to be played, and vice versa. ~ Eleanor Bron

The challenging thing is that we go home after doing the run-through and the writers stay there working, so sometimes I get script changes delivered to me at midnight. It's constantly shifting. ~ Jillian Bach

So I couldn't talk about the color of three, or whether triangles tasted better than circles, or how playing Bach on my keyboard made fireworks go off in my head, because people would think I was crazy. ~ R. J. Anderson

Imagination is an old soul. ~ Richard Bach