Billy Sheppard

“wI don’t care what they say about Aretha. She can be hiding out in her house in Detroit for years. She can go decades without taking a plane or flying off to Europe. She can cancel half her gigs and infuriate every producer and promoter in the country. She can sing all kinds of jive-ass songs that are beneath her. She can go into her diva act and turn off the world. But on any given night, when that lady sits down at the piano and gets her body and soul all over some righteous song, she’ll scare the shit out of you. And you’ll know—you’ll swear—that she’s still the best fuckin’ singer this fucked-up country has ever produced.”
― Billy Preston

“Art enables us to find ourselves and lose ourselves at the same time.”
― Thomas Merton , No Man Is an Island

“Perhaps my best years are gone. When there was a chance of happiness. But I wouldn't want them back. Not with the fire in me now. No, I wouldn't want them back.”
― Samuel Beckett, Krapp's Last Tape & Embers

“and it is not enough in the world for a wise brain to be ridiculed, it must also be wounded & mistreated; a head that is a treasury of wisdom should not expect any crown other than one of thorns. What garland can human wisdom expect when it sees what divine wisdom received?”
― Juana Inés de la Cruz, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz: Selected Writings