Nick Drake Quotes

Cruelty, rage, grief — and something others carelessly name evil — can reduce the strange collation of profanity and beauty which makes up each of us to an inanimate lump of decaying meat.

Maybe I’ve finally learned the bitter truth that I can’t beat them, even if I’ll never join them. But I’m not going to lose the one thing I can still call my own: my life. And you should wise up and do the same, especially with a new child on the way.

It would be another day ruled by this world’s new gods: gold and power.

Do intellect and morality count for nothing in the way the future unfolds? [...] Greed is our king, and corruption is his servant.

I don't think he'd ever have made a strong king. He was weak as water. Can you imagine him smiting the enemy? Destroying them in battle? Having the guts to execute the opposition?'
'Perhaps it's time we had a king who didn't do that. Perhaps it's time we had a king who had other values on his mind,' I said, playing nervously with my dagger to calm the growing anxiety inside me.
'Like what?'
'Reform of corruption. Civil order to prevent the abuses of power. Justice.

And you must never speak of what I have just told you. For this is a great secret. And great secrets bring with them great responsibilities.

We need strong, educated women to help us build a better world.

These ambassadors are all the same. They have the eyes of Anubis. And they make me feel like a servant. Like a shabti in a tomb. "Here I am. I will do it!"

Rhetoric is a dangerous art. It is the manipulation of the difference, one might say the distance, between truth and image [...] And in our times, that distance has become the means by which power is exercised [...] Rhetoric has been a force for persuasion since man began to speak, and to convince his enemy that he was indeed his friend.

Hunger is no respecter of disaster.

There is truth in what you say. Truth is a dangerous muse. One dies for the truth.

This world and the Otherworld are full of curiosities and mysteries. It would take many lifetimes to understand them all. And disappointingly, it seems to me we only have one.

In these dark times people prefer to look away from everything they would rather not see.

I suspect you are intent upon some sort of revenge, in response to this dreadful tragedy?'
'And?' I said.
'Let me counsel you. In moments such as this, we are inclined to allow the animal aspect of our natures to take control. It is a mistake. ... Because revenge can destroy a man as surely as the plague. It seems like a god, so pure and true, and full of its sense of justice and entitlement. But it is truly a monster. It feeds perpetually upon its own pain, and upon any pain it can find. And it can never be satisfied until everything has been destroyed utterly.

Fear is a powerful enemy, but a useful friend.