Saying more and feeling less Saying no but meaning yes This is all I ever meant That's the message that I sent - David Bowie

"I'm a real self-educated kind of guy. I read voraciously. Every book I ever bought, I have. I can't throw it away. It's physically impossible to leave my hand! Some of them are in warehouses. I've got a library that I keep the ones I really really like. I look around my library some nights and I do these terrible things to myself — I count up the books and think, how long I might have to live and think, 'F@#%k, I can't read two-thirds of these books.' It overwhelms me with sadness." — David Bowie, quoted in the Daily Beast in a 2002 interview with Bob Guccione, Jr.

Pushing through the market square,
So many mothers sighing.
News had just come over,
We had five years left to cry in.
News guy wept and told us,
Earth was really dying.
Cried so much his face was wet,
then I knew he was not lying.

I heard telephones, opera house, favourite melodies.
I saw boys, toys, electric irons and T.V.s.
My brain hurt like a warehouse,
It had no room to spare.
I had to cram so many things
To store everything in there.
And all the fat-skinny people.
And all the tall-short people.
And all the nobody people.
And all the somebody people.
I never thought I'd need so many people.

A girl my age went off her head,
hit some tiny children.
If the black hadn't a-pulled her off,
I think she would have killed them.
A soldier with a broken arm
Fixed his stare to the wheel of a Cadillac.
A cop knelt and kissed the feet of a priest,
and a queer threw up at the sight of that.

I think I saw you in an ice-cream parlour,
Drinking milk shakes cold and long.
Smiling and waving and looking so fine,
Don't think you knew you were in this song.

And it was cold and it rained so I felt like an actor,
And I thought of Ma and I wanted to get back there.
Your face, your race, the way that you talk,
I kiss you, you're beautiful, I want you to walk.

We've got five years,
Stuck on my eyes.
Five years,
What a surprise!
We've got five years,
My brain hurts a lot.
Five years,
That's all we've got.

- Five Years

Written in pain, written in awe
By a puzzled man who questioned
What we were here for

- Oh! You Pretty Things