Roger Waters Quotes

You take the risk of being rejected. ~ Roger Waters

For an artist to go and play in a country that occupies other people's land and oppresses them, the way Israel does, is plain wrong. They should say no. ~ Roger Waters

The Gunner's Dream (From The Final Cut)

Floating down through the clouds
Memories come rushing up to meet me now.
In the space between the heavens
and in the corner of some foreign field
I had a dream.
I had a dream.
Good-bye Max.
Good-bye Ma.
After the service when you're walking slowly to the car
And the silver in her hair shines in the cold November air
You hear the tolling bell
And touch the silk in your lapel
And as the tear drops rise to meet the comfort of the band
You take her frail hand
And hold on to the dream.
A place to stay
Enough to eat
Somewhere old heroes shuffle safely down the street
Where you can speak out loud
About your doubts and fears
And what's more no-one ever disappears
You never hear their standard issue kicking in your door.
You can relax on both sides of the tracks
And maniacs don't blow holes in bandsmen by remote control
And everyone has recourse to the law
And no-one kills the children anymore.
And no one kills the children anymore.

Night after night
Going round and round my brain
His dream is driving me insane.
In the corner of some foreign field
The gunner sleeps tonight.
What's done is done.
We cannot just write off his final scene.
Take heed of his dream. ~ Roger Waters

Hanging on in Quiet Desperation is the English Way ~ Roger Waters

Everybody's got somewhere they call home. ~ Roger Waters

You can draw a line between what I'm interested in and what I'm not interested in. On one side you can name Dylan and Lennon, who observe the world and have feelings, and write songs directly from those feelings. On the vapid side you have pop groups who need material and write songs to fill the hole, rather than getting somebody else. ~ Roger Waters

I always used to look at books and wonder how anybody could come up with so many words. But my divorce and then falling in love with somebody else has released in me an ability to write in other ways apart from songs. ~ Roger Waters

And when they found our shadows
Grouped around the TV sets
They ran down every lead
They repeated every test
They checked out all the data on their lists
And then the alien anthropologists
Admitted they were still perplexed
But on eliminating every other reason
For our sad demise
They logged the only explanation left
This species has amused itself to death ~ Roger Waters

Why is an artist an artist? Artists simply do feel and see things in a different way to other people. In a way it's a blessing, but it can also be a terrible curse. There's a great deal of satisfaction to be earned from it but often it's also a terrible burden. ~ Roger Waters

This is how you control your domestic population - by making people afraid and by identifying an enemy. ~ Roger Waters

I was faced with a choice: to deny my addiction and embrace that 'comfortably numb' but 'magicless' existence, or accept the burden of insight, take the road less travelled, and embark on the often painful journey to discover who I was and where I fit. ~ Roger Waters

And who knows which is which and who is who ~ Roger Waters

No dark sarcasm, in the classroom. ~ Roger Waters

For us the most important thing is to be visual, and for the cats watching us to have fun. This is all we want. We get very upset if people get bored when we're only half way through smashing the second set. ~ Roger Waters

I'm in competition with myself and I'm losing. ~ Roger Waters

There are so many people out there who think they are fans of Pink Floyd - and certainly the work I did in Pink Floyd - who are still furious that I left. ~ Roger Waters

I am one of the best five writers to come out of English music since the war. ~ Roger Waters

You run and you run to catch up to the sun but it's sinking, racing around to come up behind you again. ~ Roger Waters

It's a miracle was the last track recorded for the album, we based it on the rhythm from the middle of 'Late Home Tonight, where there's Graham Broad playing lots and lots of drums with me shouting in the background, pretending to be a mad Arab leader. ~ Roger Waters

I could have been an architect, but I don't think I'd have been very happy. Nearly all modern architecture is a silly game as far as I can see. ~ Roger Waters

Each small candle lights a corner of the dark. ~ Roger Waters

Can't you see it all makes perfect sense, expressed in dollars and cents, pounds shillings and pence, can't you see it all; makes perfect sense ~ Roger Waters

When we grew up and went to school There were certain teachers who would Hurt the children anyway they could By pouring their derision Upon anything we did And exposing every weakness However carefully hidden by the kids ~ Roger Waters

Either you write songs or you don't. And if you do write songs like I do, I think there's a natural desire to want to make records. ~ Roger Waters

I would not rule out going to Israel because I disapprove of the foreign policy any more than I would refuse to play in the UK because I disapprove of Tony Blair's foreign policy. ~ Roger Waters

When I first got a guitar, it was a Spanish, classical thing. ~ Roger Waters

I don't really listen to Radiohead. I listened to the albums and they just didn't move me in the way, say, John Prine does. His is just extraordinarily eloquent music. ~ Roger Waters

Everything under the sun is in tune but the sun is eclipsed by the moon ~ Roger Waters

Not now John, we've gotta get on.
S'cusi dove il bar?
Gotta get on.
Σε παρακαλώ, πού είναι το μπαρ?
Not now John, we've gotta get on.
S'il vous plait ou est le bar?
Gotta get on, gotta get on.
Oy, where's the fucking bar John!

Not now John, we've gotta get on.
Gotta get on, gotta get on.
Hammer! Hammer! Hammer! Hammer!Hammer! ~ Roger Waters

CAN YOU FREE YOURSELF ENOUGH TO BE ABLE TO EXPERIENCE THE REALITY OF LIFE AS IT GOES ON BEFORE YOU AND WITH YOU, AND AS YOU GO ON AS PART OF IT? OR NOT? BECAUSE IF YOU CAN'T YOU STAND ON SQUARE ONE, UNTIL YOU DIE. ~ Roger Waters

I have no problem with any question. ~ Roger Waters

We were contracted to make a soundtrack album but there really wasn't enough new material in the movie to make a new record that I thought was interesting. ~ Roger Waters

All alone, or in two's,
The ones who really love you
Walk up and down outside the wall.
Some hand in hand
And some gathered together in bands.
The bleeding hearts and artists
Make their stand.
And when they've given you their all
Some stagger and fall, after all it's not easy
Banging your heart against some mad bugger's wall. ~ Roger Waters

Did you see the frightened ones,
Did you hear the falling bombs,
Did you ever wonder why we had to run for shelter in the promise of a brave new world unfurlled beaneath the clear blue skies.
Good bye blue skies. ~ Roger Waters

There is a magic in some books That sucks a man into connections With the spirits hard to touch That join him to his kind. ~ Roger Waters

Not the torturer will scare me, nor the body's final fall, nor the barrels of death's rifles, nor the shadows on the wall, nor the night when to the ground the last dim star of pain, is hurled but the blind indifference of a merciless, unfeeling world. ~ Roger Waters

That one record changed everything for me. After Sgt. Pepper, it's the most influential record in the history of rock and roll. It affected Pink Floyd deeply, deeply, deeply. Philosophically, other albums may have been more important, like Lennon's first solo album. But sonically, the way the record's constructed, I think Music from Big Pink is fundamental to everything that happened after it. ~ Roger Waters

We're not ignored by The Guinness Book Of Records, but we've been largely ignored by the media during our lifetime. If you read any article, no mention is ever made of Pink Floyd. We're never included in the same sentences as The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Who. I wrote 'The Wall' as an attack on stadium rock - and there's Pink Floyd making money out of it by playing it in stadiums! Pathetic. They spoiled my creations. ~ Roger Waters

I confess I've never felt like a passenger. ~ Roger Waters

In the finished article, the only thing that is important is whether it moves you or not. There is nothing else that is important at all. ~ Roger Waters

How can you have any pudding if you don't eat your meat? ~ Roger Waters

Show me a sexual practice that involves ice cubes and hot sauce, and I will show you a sexual practice that would be improved without them. ~ Roger Ebert

Thus, human beings are now carrying out a large scale geophysical experiment of the kind that could not have happened in the past ... Within a few centuries we are returning to the atmosphere and oceans the concentrated organic carbon stored in sedimentary rocks over hundreds of millions of years. ~ Roger Revelle

I always enjoyed participating in artistic endeavors, and I remember in high school participating in chorus, drama and singing madrigals, mainly because they were an easy A. I loved being in plays and musicals too, but you didn't really get credit for those. ~ Roger Bart

I was involved in music, acting, and some running, but my firm wish was to become a doctor. That was the formative age when I had decided on the pattern of my career. ~ Roger Bannister

He stops to wait for her, but she has a sudden burst of energy, passing him. On and on she sprints, unobstructed, kicking up her heels at the water's edge. Dark hair to her chin, rearranged by the wind, obscuring her face. Just when he thinks she will have the energy to run forever, to escape his sight, she pauses. Turning back, breathing hard, her hand on her hip, making sure he is there. ~ Jhumpa Lahiri

I'm a fan of characters wherever they come from. Truth be told, I wasn't a big comic book fan growing up. Maybe that helps me bring a fresh perspective to things because I'm not trying to match anything that's been done in the past. ~ Roger Craig Smith

The children had had an argument once about whether there was more grass in the world or more sand, and Roger said that of course there must be more sand because of under the sea; in every ocean all over the world there would be sand, if you looked deep down. But there could be grass too, argued Deborah, a waving grass, a grass that nobody had ever seen, and the colour of that ocean grass would be darker than any grass on the surface of the world, in fields or prairies or people's gardens in America. It would be taller than tress and it would move like corn in the wind. (The Pool ~ Daphne Du Maurier

Some of my finest memories are from my time at the University of Texas. ~ Roger Clemens

Here's my advice: Go ahead and be whacky. Get into a crazy frame of mind and ask what's funny about what you're doing. ~ Roger Von Oech

The waters saw you, God; the waters saw you and lashed about, even the deeps of the sea* trembled.j 18 The clouds poured down their rains; the thunderheads rumbled; your arrows flashed back and forth.k 19 The thunder of your chariot wheels resounded; your lightning lit up the world; the earth trembled and quaked.l 20 Through the sea was your way; your path, through the mighty waters, though your footsteps were unseen.m 21 You led your people like a flock by the hand of Moses and Aaron. ~ United States Conference Of Catholic Bishops

It's strange: We leave the movie having enjoyed its conclusion so much that we almost forgot our earlier reservations. But they were there, and they were real. ~ Roger Ebert

Life appears: a complex dampness, destined to an intricate future and charged with secret virtues, capable of challenge and creation. A kind of precarious slime, of surface mildew, in which a ferment is already working. A turbulent, spasmodic sap, a presage and expectation of a new way of being, breaking with mineral perpetuity and boldly exchanging it for the doubtful privilege of being able to tremble, decay, and multiply. ~ Roger Caillois

We eat every day, and if we do it in a way that doesn't recognize value, it's contributing to the destruction of our culture and of agriculture. But if it's done with a focus and care, it can be a wonderful thing. It changes the quality of your life. ~ Alice Waters

Augustus Waters," she said. "Um, maybe?" "Oh, my God. I've seen him at parties. The things I would do to that boy. I mean, not now that I know you're interested in him. But, oh, sweet holy Lord, I would ride that one-legged pony all the way around the corral." "Kaitlyn," I said. "Sorry. Do you think you'd have to be on top?" "Kaitlyn," I said. ~ John Green

Some of these people make my skin crawl. ~ Roger Ebert

And that's the mistake that was made with Steel Pier. Roger was caught between a rock and hard place. It would have cost a couple of million dollars more to take it to Boston or someplace first. So we opened about a month too early. ~ Gregory Harrison

I want every child in America to eat a nutritious, delicious, sustainably sourced school lunch for free. ~ Alice Waters

When we sing, our hearts can lift and fly, over the troubled waters and over the years, ~ Judy Collins

If I sang the way I talk it would sound like "Tommy Steele sings Muddy Waters!" ~ James Hunter

[ ... ] any fool can make a discovery. Every baby has to discover more in the first years of its life than Roger Bacon ever discovered in his laboratory. ~ George Bernard Shaw

We in Government have begun to recognize the critical work which must be done at all levels-local, State and Federal-in ending the pollution of our waters. ~ Robert Kennedy

It is a way of calling a man a fool when no attention is given to what he says. ~ Roger L'Estrange

I'm better off without the armor, because no matter how much I fortify it, no matter how well oiled the plates are, and no matter how tightly I weave the chain links, there's no way it can really protect me. An arrow can always slip through; a swung club could always bruise. And that's okay, really, because it is as much a part of my job to feel as it is to make others feel. ~ Daniel Waters

For nine miles along a submerged ridge, the corals rise in lumpy hillocks that spread out 100 yards or more, resembling heaped scoops of rainbow sherbet and Neapolitan ice cream. The mounds, some 100 feet tall, sprout delicate treelike gorgonians that sift currents for a plankton meal. Fish, worms and other creatures dart or crawl in every crevice. This description could apply to thousands of coral reefs in shallow, sun-streaked tropical waters from Australia to the Bahamas. But this is the Sula Ridge, 1,000 feet down in frigid darkness on the continental shelf 100 miles off Norway's coast. ~ James Dwight Dana

As different streams having different sources all mingle their waters in the sea, so different tendencies, various though they appear, crooked or straight, all lead to God. ~ Swami Vivekananda

Decency, loyalty, courage, how it all shrivelled away when one was frightened. She remembered Lilian reaching for her hand as the foreman got to his feet. In the seconds before the verdict, her own grip had tightened like a vice. Had she been about to urge Lilian forward, or to hold her back? She didn't know. She would never know. And the not knowing wasn't like the absence of something, it was like another burden, a different shape and weight from the last. The lightness left her. She ~ Sarah Waters

How can you be conservative and justify wiretapping people without a warrant? We're supposed to be the party of personal freedom and civil liberties. ~ Roger Stone

Growing up in Ohio and just being kind of an average guy from flyover country - my dad was a factory guy - I try to put things on a screen that reflect reality. I don't mind if people want to argue with that, or think that's crazy. ~ Roger Ailes

The tender Evenlode that makes Her meadows hush to hear the sound Of waters mingling in the brakes, And binds my heart to English ground. A lovely river, all alone, She lingers in the hills and holds A hundred little towns of stone, Forgotten in the western wolds. ~ Hilaire Belloc

Here is a tree rooted in African soil, nourished with waters from the rivers of Afrika. Come and sit under its shade and become, with us, the leaves of the same branch and the branches of the same tree ~ Robert Sobukwe

He didn't look a lot like his father, save when he wanted something badly. She pulled herself up a bit, shaking her head to clear the dizziness, and Roger looked up at her, distracted by her movement. For an instant, she saw Jerry look out of his eyes, and the world swam afresh. She closed her own, though, and gulped her tea, scalding as it was. Mum ~ Diana Gabaldon

Why is your equation only for angels, Roger? Why can't we do something, down here? Couldn't there be an equation for us too, something to help us find a safer place?'
'Why am I surrounded,' his usual understanding self today, 'by statistical illiterates? There's no way, love, not as long as the mean density of strikes is constant. ~ Thomas Pynchon

I had always wanted to become a neurologist, which is one of the most demanding vocations in medicine. Where do you stop, after all, with the brain? How does it function? What are its limits? The work seems unending. ~ Roger Bannister

But you cannot know the glimpses I have had, you cannot know there is another, dazzling place, that seems to welcome me! I have been led to it, Helen, by someone marvellous and strange. You won't know this. They will tell you of her, and they will make her seem squalid and ordinary, they will turn my passion into something gross and wrong. You will know, that it is neither of those things. It is only love, Helen - only that.
I cannot live, and not be at her side! ~ Sarah Waters