Nick Drake Quotes

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

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

The truth is always the truth.

I see I have shocked you all a little. But to be a poet is to accept the responsibility of speaking the truth! No matter what the cost to my personal safety [...] in matters of men and this world. I'm a poet, not a complete fool…

There is no such thing as a cheerful poem [...] Happiness writes in water, not ink.

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

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.

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

‘Perhaps our childhoods are buried inside all of us. Perhaps they set the pattern for our futures,’ I suggested.
‘In that case I am doomed by mine,’ she said without self-pity.
‘Perhaps not, for you are aware of it,’ I said.

But words are imperfect, and our system of writing, for all its great glories, has its limitations in terms of its ability to describe creation in all its manifest and hidden glories ... So we would have to invent another way of describing things.

Once wine was the means to artificial happiness; now things are much more sophisticated, and what was one of the great secrets of medicine has become the only bliss many find in this life.

Order is the priority of power.

Fear is a powerful enemy, but a useful friend.

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.

Perhaps it is the human imagination that is the monster,' he said. 'I believe no animal suffers from the torments of the imagination. Only man…'
'The imagination is capable of enacting the very best in us, and the very worst,' agreed Hor, 'and I know what mine would like to do to some people.'
'Your verse is torment enough,' quipped the architect.
'And that is why civilized life, morality, ethics and so on, matter. We are half-enlightened, and half-monstrous,' said Nakht assertively. 'We must build our civility upon reason and mutual benefit.'
Sobek raised his cup.
'I salute your reason. I wish it every success.