Charles R. Cross > Quotes

“He was able to sit in silence for long stretches without feeling a need to make small talk.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“Once Ryan asked Kurt, “What are you going to do when you’re thirty?” “I’m not worried about what’s going to happen when I’m thirty,” Kurt replied in the same tone he would use to discuss a broken spark plug, “because I’m never going to make it to thirty. You know what life is like after thirty—I don’t want that.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“Kurt left in the early morning to walk around Aberdeen in the pale light of dawn. The storm had passed, birds were chirping, and everything in the world seemed more alive. He walked around for hours thinking about it all, waiting for school to begin, watching the sun come up, wondering where his life was heading.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“By the second week of November 1990, a new character had begun to spring forth in Kurt's journal writings, and this figure would soon make its way into almost every image, song, or story. He intentionally misspelled its name, and in doing so he was granting it a life of its own. Oddly, he gave it a female persona, but since it became his great love that Fall - and even made him throw up, just like Tobi - there was a fairness in this gender choice. He called it 'heroine'.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“He had the desperation, not the courage, to be himself. Once you do that, you can’t go wrong, because you can’t make any mistakes when people love you for being yourself. But for Kurt, it didn’t matter that other people loved him; he simply didn’t love himself enough.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“One of these days, I'm going to astral project myself up into the skies," he boasted. "I'll be going to the stars and the moon. I want to fly and see what's up there.
"I want to go up to the sky," he said, looking at his aunt, "from star to star.”
― Charles R. Cross, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix

“In Newcastle, Kurt announced from the stage, “I am a homosexual, I am a drug user, and I fuck pot-bellied pigs,” another classic Cobainism, though only one of his three claims was true.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“Being unemployed, Kurt set in motion a routine that he would follow for the rest of his life. He would rise at around noon and eat a brunch of sorts. Kraft Macaroni and Cheese was his favorite food. After eating, he would spend the rest of the day doing one of three things: watching television, which he did unceasingly; practicing his guitar, which he did for hours a day, usually while watching TV; or creating some kind of art project, be it a painting, collage, or three-dimensional installation. This last activity was never formal— he rarely identified himself as an artist—yet he spent hours in this manner.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“He was only five-foot-ten, but people frequently mistook him for being over six feet, at least in part because his gigantic Afro made him appear larger than life. His thin, angular frame, which was shaped like an inverted triangle, furthered this illusion; he had narrow hips, a small waist, but impossibly wide shoulders and arms. His fingers were abnormally long and sinuous, and like the rest of him, they were a rich caramel color. His bandmates jokingly called him “The Bat” because of his preference for covering his windows and sleeping during the day, but the nickname also fit his penchant for wearing capes, which furthered his superhero appearance.”
― Charles R. Cross, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix

“I was a dreamer by nature. I was a drunkard as a result of castrated dreams.”
― Charles Cross

“Though Kurt would later claim that his graffiti messages were political, in fact, most of what he wrote was nonsensical. He enraged a neighbor with a boat by painting “Boat Ack” in red letters on the ship’s hull; on the other side he lettered, “Boat people go home.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“languor,”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“acrimony”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“anomalous”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“apocryphal”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“Yang aku tahu, aku sedang diliputi perasaan bahagia karena jatuh cinta dan aku tidak tahu musikku bakal berubah atau tidak.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“reticence”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“It was a pattern he would play out his entire life: Rather than lose someone he cared for, he would withdraw first, usually by creating some mock conflict as a way of lessening the abandonment he felt was inevitable.”
― Charles R. Cross

“Ele tinha o desespero, não a coragem, para ser ele mesmo. Uma vez que você tem isso, você não pode dar errado, porque você não pode cometer nenhum erro quando as pessoas o amam por você ser você mesmo. Mas, para Kurt, não importava que as outras pessoas o amassem; ele simplesmente não se amava o bastante.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“anathema,”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“to tell an emotional truth rather than an actual one.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“They drove to the parking lot of Garfield High School, where Jimi pointed to the windows on the building and told Carmen what classes were held there. The building had a pull that had him returning with a regularity that was in contrast to the infrequency of his attendance as a student. Since his fame, Garfield had taken on a mysterious allure that saw Jimi dedicate all his Seattle shows to the school from which he flunked out.”
― Charles R. Cross, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix

“Depressing music really spoke to me. It really was my language.”
― Charles R. Cross

“He had spent three hardscrabble years performing on the Chitlin’ Circuit—a route of juke joints, icehouses, and barrooms where rhythm-and-blues music was played primarily to African American audiences. Just to get to those gigs, traveling black musicians had to plan carefully in advance such things as finding food and using a toilet, simple services that were denied blacks in parts of white America.”
― Charles R. Cross, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix

“he had been a guest of honor in many pubs, and even the beloved Paul McCartney had once bought him a pint.”
― Charles R. Cross, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix

“Noel had been born in Folkestone, a city in southeastern England, and he had already spent a lifetime in pubs and around cranky publicans.”
― Charles R. Cross, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix

“Kurt’s was a life that I find compelling, considering what he rose above and what he did with that circumstance. He used his pain to create art in the form of music, and that was surely admirable, whether you loved his music or not.”
― Charles R. Cross, Heavier Than Heaven: A Biography of Kurt Cobain

“Jimi had an extraordinary sense of self-awareness and an uncanny ability to use music to express emotional truths.”
― Charles R. Cross, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix

“The night before Al left, they partied at the Rocking Chair, a club where Ray Charles would later be discovered.”
― Charles R. Cross, Room Full of Mirrors: A Biography of Jimi Hendrix