Folk Quotes

“If Music is a Place -- then Jazz is the City, Folk is the Wilderness, Rock is the Road, Classical is a Temple.”
― Vera Nazarian

“I had no songs in my repertoire for commercial radio anyway. Songs about debauched bootleggers, mothers that drowned their own children, Cadillacs that only got five miles to the gallon, floods, union hall fires, darkness and cadavers at the bottom of rivers weren't for radiophiles. There was nothing easygoing about the folk songs I sang. They weren't friendly or ripe with mellowness. They didn't come gently to the shore. I guess you could say they weren't commercial.

Not only that, my style was too erratic and hard to pigeonhole for the radio, and songs, to me, were more important that just light entertainment. They were my preceptor and guide into some altered consciousness of reality, some different republic, some liberated republic. Greil Marcus, the music historian, would some thirty years later call it "the invisible republic."

Whatever the case, it wasn't that I was anti-popular culture or anything and I had no ambitions to stir things up. i just thought of popular culture as lame as hell and a big trick. It was like the unbroken sea of frost that lay outside the window and you had to have awkward footgear to walk on it.

I didn't know what age of history we were in nor what the truth of it was. Nobody bothered with that. If you told the truth, that was all well and good and if you told the un-truth, well, that's still well and good. Folk songs taught me that.”
― Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“Naten s'kisha gjume, me mbyste pendimi, kot thone qe pendimi te lehteson.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I really was never any more than what I was -a folk musician who gazed into the gray mist with tear-blinded eyes and made up songs that floated in a luminous haze.”
― Bob Dylan, Chronicles, Volume One

“This is a book for every fiddler who has realized halfway through playing an ancient Scottish air that the Ramones "I Wanna Be Sedated" is what folk music is really all about, and gone straight into it.”
― Neil Gaiman, The Good Fairies of New York

“Po ç'pune ke ti, mor zoteri, me çizmet e mia te shqyera dhe me berrylat e mi te grisur?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Lere pastaj qe ka dhe jo pak pasunare qe s'i pelqen te degjojne ankimet me ze te larte te varfanjakeve. Se, sigurisht, i shqetesojne, i bezdisin me ankesat pa fund. Po, moj shpirt, varferia kurdohere e bezdisshme eshte. Ja ç'eshte, Varenjka. Renkimet e te uriturve, klithmat e zemerplasurve u prishin gjumin ca zoterinjve.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“E po, mirupafshim! Po me mbyt trishtimi, nga merzia. Seç kam nje brenge ne shpirt, Makar Aleksejeviç. As vete s'e di arsyen. E tille dite paska qene. Mirupafshim!”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Kushdo qofte, edhe njeriu i vogel, nga ata qe nuk e turbullojne ujin, qe askujt s'i bien me qafe, qe rrojne me friken e perendise, por edhe me friken per veten, shkojne me mendjen te mos ngacmojne njeri se keshtu as ate vete nuk do ta ngacmojne, do ta lene te qete ne hallet e tij, nuk deshiron qe te tjeret te futin hundet ne jeten e perditshme qe ben, nuk ia ka enda te flasin ne e ka te ri apo te vjeter jelekun, ne i ka te reja apo me mballoma çizmet, nuk ia ka enda te marrin vesh te tjeret ç'eshte duke ngrene, çfare po shkruan?... E ç'te keqe paska, moj zemer, qe une, kur shoh xhadene te prishur, eci ne maje te gishtave, shkel me kujdes per te ruajtur çizmet? Pse duhet shkruar per tjetrin qe ndonjehere nuk ka para as per te pire nje gote çaj? Sikur qenka e thene dhe e vulosur qe njerezit, te gjithe sa jane, patjeter duhet te pine çaj. Po pse e udhes qenka te shohesh ne gojen e tjetrit per te ditur ç'cope eshte duke pertypur? A fyhet njeriu keshtu? Jo, shpirti im! Perse u dashka fyer tjetri kur ai s'te ngacmon?”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Duhet te qendrojne larg njeri-tjetri si fatkeqet ashtu dhe te varferit, keshtu nuk do te rendoheshin nga njeri-tjetri. Ju shkaktova aq shume fatkeqesi, qe s'i kishit patur kurre me pare ne jeten modeste te vetmitarit. Kjo me brengos, ma derrmon shpirtin.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“Eshte e mire letersia, Varenjka, shume e mire eshte. U binda diten e trete te vizitave. Gje me peshe. Ua forcon zemren njerezve, u meson si te jetojne. C'nuk thuhet ne ato shkrime.”
― Fyodor Dostoevsky

“I rub a hand over my face. By the fire, a spindly, insectile faerie stirs a big pot. "You want soup, mortal? "
I shake my head.
"You want to be soup? " It asks hopefully.”
― Holly Black, The Wicked King

“reality has too many heads”
― Bob Dylan, Lyrics, 1962-2001

“I rub a hand over my face. By the fire, a spindly, insectile, faerie stirs a big pot. "You want soup, mortal? "
I shake my head.
"You want to be soup? " it asks hopefully.”
― Holly Black, The Queen of Nothing

“The cultured court singer of heroic lays disappears along with the heroic spirit of his public, but heroic poetry survives the heroic age and is more long-lived than the society to which it owes its origin. After the decline of the military aristocratic culture, it turns from an exclusive class interest into a universal art. The fact that this declension was so easily brought about, and that the same kind of poetry could be understood and enjoyed by the upper and lower classes almost simultaneously, can only be explained by assuming that the difference in cultural standards between the rulers and the ruled cannot have been anything like so great as in later ages. It is true that from the very beginning the rulers lived in a different sphere from the people, but they were not yet so conscious of the gulf that divided them from the lower classes.”
― Arnold Hauser, The Social History of Art, Volume 1: From Prehistoric Times to the Middle Ages

“Folks is all queer nowadays,' said the peasant-woman.”
― Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Crime and Punishment

“There are those among the Folk so hideous that all living things shrink back in horror. And yet others have a grotesquerie so exaggerated, so voluptuous, that it comes all the way around to beauty”
― Holly Black, The Stolen Heir

“Jag vet att förändring kostar. Saker händer. Oförutsedda saker. Folk är folk, vad de än är för sort, och rädsla finns överallt.”
― Siri Pettersen, Evna

“Disrespecting elders is the cancer of folks.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“Speranza si incupì sotto lo sguardo delle nipotine, le sopracciglia bianche si incontrarono al centro della fronte e la luce aranciata dell’abat-jour marcava le rughe come trincee nere, creava ombre scure nell’incavo degli occhi e sotto il mento. «Sa Filonzana» disse. «La Filatrice» chiarì subito dopo, a beneficio delle bambine. [...] «Lei fila il destino della gente» continuò. «E lo interrompe, se deve. Zac! Taglia il filo» spiegò, mimando un paio di forbici con le dita, quasi volesse giocare a Carta-Forbici-Sasso.
«Come le Parche» osservò Elena, dall’alto dei suoi dieci anni di saggezza.”
― Letizia Loi, Sa Filonzana

“La gente tende a immaginare le fate – is janas nella sua terra, il Piccolo Popolo in altre tradizioni – come esseri minuti e graziosi. La verità è che, a dispetto del nome, sono creature di ogni razza e forma, e ben poche si rivelano gradevoli.”
― Letizia Loi, Janas

“Un genitore normale non pensa che il mostro sotto al letto sia vero. Ma loro non erano una famiglia normale. Non avevano il lusso dell’ignoranza.”
― Letizia Loi, Janas

“[...] e fu allora che Elena notò il tatuaggio sul collo: sotto l’orecchio appariva un cerchio diviso in quattro parti da due linee incrociate. Ogni quarto era riempito da righe che formavano un diverso motivo, a volte più strette, altre più larghe, ondulate o riempite da puntini. Una pintadera, il timbro con cui fin dall’età nuragica si usava marchiare il pane per portarlo al forno comune o colorarsi il corpo, per segnare l’appartenenza a una precisa famiglia. Il simbolo, diverso per ogni casa, era sopravvissuto tra i cacciatori per riconoscersi tra loro come facenti parte di un’unica gilda, pur facendo parte di ceppi differenti.”
― Letizia Loi, Brebus

“Nel mentre, Aurora cominciò a recitare un brebu, una preghiera – o forse sarebbe stato più corretto chiamarlo incantesimo – in sardo, le cui origini risalivano a ben prima dell’arrivo del cristianesimo, quando i popoli veneravano la terra e il cielo sotto il nome di una sola Dea, la Madre. I brebus potevano avere molti fini, ma questo era cantato affinché lo spirito trovasse pace.”
― Letizia Loi

“«Lei era la Dea, la Grande Madre, quando ancora non si era mai sentito parlare di un unico Dio. [...] Ma con il passare del tempo la gente ha dimenticato, ha smesso di credere. Ora non è altro che lo spettro di se stessa, frammentato in varie eco, e quando appare prende in sacrificio chiunque trovi da solo sul suo cammino.»”
― Letizia Loi, Bona Dea

“Το Καρναβάλι εισέβαλλε πανηγυρικά και μέσα στα σπίτια - άλλαζαν οι παλμοί της καρδιάς όταν άκουγες τα κουδούνια να ξηλώνουν τις σκάλες και να 'ρχονται κατά πάνω σου - και φτάνοντας στη γωνιά όπου καθόταν το γεροντότερο και γι' αυτό σεβαστότερο πρόσωπο της οικογένειας, του έδινε με χειροφίλημα ένα απ' τα πορτοκάλια του ζητώντας να συγχωρεθούν τα αμαρτήματα' ή με την γενικότερη και μονολεκτική έκφραση "συγχωρεμένα". Στην συνέχεια απ' την χαρά του θαρρείς γι' αυτό που ζήτησε και πήρε, αλλά και γι 'αυτό που πρόσφερε, έφερνε τους πανηγυρικότερους κύκλους μες στο δωμάτιο κινώντας μπρος-πίσω το σώμα του, απανωτά, με πολλή δύναμη, έτσι που το μπατάλι να ζει τις ενδοξότερες στιγμές του φτάνοντας ως ψηλά στην πλάτη, ξαναπέφτοντας στα χαμηλά και ξαναγγίζοντας τα ύψη... Για να μην ξεχνάμε κιόλας πώς όλα αυτά λειτουργούσαν και ως πρόφαση, ευγενής πρόφαση, προκειμένου να φάνε κι οι άνθρωποι τότε ένα πορτοκάλι!...”
― Ζυράννα Ζατέλη, Και με το φως του λύκου επανέρχονται

“The world of science and the world of everyday experience do not always connect especially well.”
― Robin I.M. Dunbar, How Religion Evolved

“Oppression is the character of stupid people if God wanted to punish a folk, will put them under the hands of the oppressors.”
― Kamaran Ihsan Salih

“لا يمكن أن يكون الجيش راضيا والشعب ساخطاً، مهما غمر الضباط بالإمتيازات والمرتبات”
― مصطفى أمين, سنة رابعة سجن

“My sorrow in the nights of past I left,
all the sadness from your lack, at rest,
since you’re with me, lacking, the world is aglow,
back at folk advice I throw;
if I took advice, I’d about you forget,
I’d think of another, myself loose I’d let,
yet I wouldn’t always remain just this calm,
confined in myself, I’d hold me in my palm…”
― Will Advise, На чист Български...: Pristine Bulgarian sayings...