Bailey Bristol > Quotes

“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.-Leonard Cohen”
― Bailey Bristol, Love Will Follow

“Jess Pepper's review of the Avalon Strings:

'In a land so very civilized and modern as ours, it is unpopular to suggest that the mystical isle of Avalon ever truly existed. But I believe I have found proof of it right here in Manhattan.

To understand my reasoning, you must recall first that enchanting tale of a mist-enshrouded isle where medieval women--descended from the gods--spawned heroic men. Most notable among these was the young King Arthur. In their most secret confessions, these mystic heroes acknowledged Avalon, and particularly the music of its maidens, as the source of their power.

Many a school boy has wept reading of Young King Arthur standing silent on the shore as the magical isle disappears from view, shrouded in mist.

The boy longs as Arthur did to leap the bank and pilot his canoe to the distant, singing atoll. To rejoin nymphs who guard in the depths of their water caves the meaning of life. To feel again the power that burns within.

But knowledge fades and memory dims, and schoolboys grow up. As the legend goes, the way became unknown to mortal man. Only woman could navigate the treacherous blanket of white that dipped and swirled at the surface of the water.

And with its fading went also the music of the fabled isle.

Harps and strings that heralded the dawn and incited robed maidens to dance evaporated into the mists of time, and silence ruled.

But I tell you, Kind Reader, that the music of Avalon lives. The spirit that enchanted knights in chain mail long eons ago is reborn in our fair city, in our own small band of fair maids who tap that legendary spirit to make music as the Avalon Strings.

Theirs is no common gift. Theirs is no ordinary sound. It is driven by a fire from within, borne on fingers bloodied by repetition. Minds tormented by a thirst for perfection.

And most startling of all is the voice that rises above, the stunning virtuoso whose example leads her small company to higher planes.
Could any other collection of musicians achieve the heights of this illustrious few? I think not.

I believe, Friends of the City, that when we witnes their performance, as we may almost nightly at the Warwick Hotel, we witness history's gift to this moment in time. And for a few brief moments in the presence of these maids, we witness the fiery spirit that endured and escaped the obliterating mists of Avalon.”
― Bailey Bristol, The Devil's Dime

“Moonlight does things to a street scene that no other natural or man-made phenomenon can effect. People walk slower, their smiles lingering on contended faces. Horses that usually move along fast enough to stir up the dust off the street plod lazily in the clear, cool night. And in dark corners where people forget to look, the goons come out.”
― Bailey Bristol, The Devil's Dime

“This women's orchestra made a demure picture in their muted dove grays, alright, but they played like they were gowned in scarlet and gold.”
― Bailey Bristol, The Devil's Dime

“Those who prosper by thievery, thuggery, or by ruining another, have chosen to live on the devil's dime.”
― Bailey Bristol, The Devil's Dime

“[Jess]"... you were wonderful. Magnificent. Incomparable. Unparalleled. Incredible."

"Oh, stop it!" Addie grinned and blushed, and backed a step with each word, as Jess advanced toward her with each accolade. But on the third step, her back made contact with the ivy wall, and Jess kept moving toward her until he'd pressed her into its soft, green embrace. Then he moved another inch until his Sunday boots straddled her Sunday pumps.”
― Bailey Bristol, The Devil's Dime

“Whatever cosmic attraction had drawn [Jess & Addie] to one another in the first place was beginning to fill in with the chinks and mortar of very real, very likeable human traits.”
― Bailey Bristol, The Devil's Dime

“Words and the way he put them together were not only is livelihood, they were his life. Exploring the human condition was his pastime. Recording what he found in ways that prompted readers to dance or weep was his passion.”
― Bailey Bristol, The Devil's Dime

“Elsewhere in the city, the line between dark and dawn eventually began to form. But in the small room on the fourth floor of Sutton House, the line between two lives had begun at last to blur.”
― Bailey Bristol, The Devil's Dime

“She stood there. Breathing. Then, head still bowed, she raised her violin to its home beneath her chin. And with every vibrant note she'd ever explored, with all the sweet strength she'd ever conjured, and with every strain of loving Jess had planted within her, Addie played”
― Bailey Bristol, The Devil's Dime