I've seen the kingdoms blow like ashes in the winds of change, yeah, but the power of truth is the fuel for the flame. So the darker the ages get, there's a stronger beacon yet. ... If the world is night — shine my life like a light.
— Indigo Girls, "Let It Be Me"
When your vision stays clear in the face of your fear; when you see turning out the lights, which is their only power, when we stand like spotlights in a mighty tower — all for one and one for all! Then we sing the common call.
— (same)
Everything that we call Invention, discovery in the higher sense, is the ultimate outcome of the original perception of some truth, which, long perfected in quiet, leads at length suddenly to and unexpectedly to productive recognition.
— Goethe, quoted by Reuleaux in the introduction to Kinematics of Machinery, as translated by Alexander Blackie William Kennedy
Help, I'm a rock! Somebody! Please! Help, I'm a rock!
— The Mothers of Invention
Thank you so much for your warm hospitality this evening. We are so grateful to play for you. Thank you so much, friends; we are so privileged to be able to gather in moments like this when so much of the world is plunged in darkness and chaos.
— Leonard Cohen, at a concert in London 2008, before playing Anthem
Don't dwell on what has passed away. ... 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, Anthem
Staring at the blank page before you, open up the dirty window, let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find; reaching, so close you can almost taste it — release your inhibitions! Feel the rain on your skin; no one else can feel it for you, only you can let it in. No one else, no one else can speak the words on your lips. Drench yourself in words unspoken, live your life with arms wide open; today is where your book begins. The rest is still unwritten!
— Natasha Bedingfield, Unwritten
Wandering Star, for whom it is reserved the blackness, the darkness, forever. ... And the masks that the monsters wear to feed upon their prey. ... Always doubled up inside, taunted, cruel.
— Portishead, Wandering Star