Barry LePatner

Civilization is a stream with banks. The stream is sometimes filled with blood from people killing, stealing, shouting and doing the things historians usually record, while on the banks, unnoticed, people build homes, make love, raise children, sing songs, write poetry and even whittle statues. The story of civilization is what happened on the banks.

If I’d known I’d live to be a 100 I’d have taken much better care of myself.

Come to me, wild and untamed. Bring the oceans on your lips, the mountains on your spine; I want to explore all the places you have ever called home. Let me pluck each petal from the gardens you’ve grown, overcrowded seedlings pushing up through your bones. Come to me dipped in the stars, come to me wearing all your scars. I want to show you just how beautiful you are.

Truth over Harmony.

Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so.

Life is ten percent what happens to you and ninety percent how you respond to it.

What is written without effort is in general read without pleasure.

I never found the companion that was so companionable as solitude. We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers. A man thinking or working is always alone, let him be where he will.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.

Life is neither old or new, ancient or modern, but simply more or less vivid-any song or musical composition will live that expresses or reproduces this vividness of life.-From this you will see that I believe that music fills a great place. The teaching of it goes far to restore the balance and richness of life, and-I might add- the unit of life also.

This above all: to thine own self be true.

It is better to deserve honors and not have them than to have them and not deserve them.

You are the fever that never broke, the name stuck in my throat. You are every letter of every word in every poem I ever wrote.

The art of simplicity is a puzzle of complexity.

Join the dance.