Richie Havens (Richard Pierce "Richie" Havens) Quotes
I saw the Village as a place you could escape to, to express yourself. When I first went there, I wrote and performed poetry. Then I drew portraits for a couple of years. It took a while before I thought about picking up a guitar.
Quotes to Explore
-
I've been writing a lot of poetry recently. It helps me think and work things out.
-
I actually bought a travel guitar, and that guitar is really cool. You can actually fold the guitar, and you can plug headphones into it, but it's acoustic, or semi-acoustic.
-
I have been desperate to escape for so many years now, it is routine for me to try to escape.
-
If poetry should address itself to the same needs and aspirations, the same hopes and fears, to which the Bible addresses itself, it might rival it in distribution.
-
A poet's autobiography is his poetry. Anything else is just a footnote.
-
To escape the curse of commoditization, a company has to be a game-changer, and that requires employees who are proactive, inventive and zealous.
-
Poetry is the deification of reality.
-
When I finally put my guitar in the case the last time, I want to be remembered just as a singer, not as a country singer or pops singer - just a singer.
-
Poetry is the experience of liberty. The poet risks himself, chances all on the poem's all with each verse he writes.
-
I found that it wasn't so oddball to like music and poetry and visual arts, they're kindred spirits.
-
Everyone sort of sees his own life and times as being ephemeral. One thinks that everything good or important that happened, happened in the past. But I think that seeing scenes that you are used to, but with the heightening effects of poetry, perhaps makes you value your life and times more than you might otherwise do.
-
I was trying to pay the bills with poems, and it was easy to memorize my poems, because I'd be riding my bike in California trying to memorize them before going on stage at a poetry lounge.
-
I enjoy listening to contemporary rock on the college stations while I'm taking long walks, love gospel and soul music, am fascinated by hip-hop and rap as the new kind of urban 'beat' poetry and, come to think of it, find something interesting about just any kind of music.
-
One has only as much morality as one has philosophy and poetry.
-
As I try to get around with a guitar, a banjo and a suitcase of high heels and dresses, I treasure that little ukulele.
-
Genuine poetry can communicate before it is understood.
-
I love Sufism as I love beautiful poetry, but it is not the answer. Sufism is like a mirage in the desert. It says to you, come and sit, relax and enjoy yourself for a while.
-
There will be some tracks on the next album which that will consist of mostly noise and feedback, whereas others may just have guitar parts and samples.
-
I want people to see what's inside my head rather than just looking at me.
-
Most people don't really like to pose. It is difficult to get them to be present and relaxed under this kind of molecular scrutiny. I want them to understand I'm not simply painting them: I am painting them within a precise moment in time, as a shadow moves across their eyebrows. Then it is gone. The moment is over.
-
I went out with this boy on the proviso that he didn't tell anybody we were together. The idiot didn't keep his mouth shut. I dumped him. I never went out with a boy from school again.
-
Playing acoustic guitar is like having sex with your clothes on. I mean you know how to do it, but it’s more difficult.
-
I saw the Village as a place you could escape to, to express yourself. When I first went there, I wrote and performed poetry. Then I drew portraits for a couple of years. It took a while before I thought about picking up a guitar.
