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"It took a couple of hundred million years to develop a thinking ape and you want a smart one in a lousy few hundred thousand? That lemming drive you're talking about is there — but there's another kind of drive, another kind of force that's working against it. Or else there wouldn't still be any people and there wouldn't be the words to have this conversation and—" She paused, looked down at herself. "And I wouldn't be here to say them."

 

Spider Robinson

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I was recording with The Polyphonic Spree, recording The Fragile Army, and we were holed up in January in Minnesota at our studio. They called Mike in to play, and we just hit it off, in a really, really special way. Actually, the night after meeting and having a conversation with him, I sat down and I wrote "All My Stars Aligned". And I just kind of had an idea, "Wouldn't it be amazing if Mike Garson played? So the guy who played solo in Aladdin Sane, wouldn't it be amazing if this guy played this song?"
And I wrote it, based on a conversation we had, but I didn't want to ask him, because I felt shy, and nervous, and everything. It was a few months later, actually, we kind of got in touch, and, 'Oh, what are you doing?', and I sent him a couple songs that I was working on. I sent him "Your Lips Are Red" and I sent him "All My Stars Aligned", just to show, you know, 'wink-wink, hint-hint, this is what I'm doing.' And he wrote me back, the things that we'd said, and asked to play on the record. So I was, 'Well, okay, if you insist…'
That worked out pretty miraculously.

 

St. (musician) Vincent

 

I was recording with The Polyphonic Spree, recording The Fragile Army, and we were holed up in January in Minnesota at our studio. They called Mike in to play, and we just hit it off, in a really, really special way. Actually, the night after meeting and having a conversation with him, I sat down and I wrote "All My Stars Aligned". And I just kind of had an idea, "Wouldn't it be amazing if Mike Garson played? So the guy who played solo in Aladdin Sane, wouldn't it be amazing if this guy played this song?"
And I wrote it, based on a conversation we had, but I didn't want to ask him, because I felt shy, and nervous, and everything. It was a few months later, actually, we kind of got in touch, and, 'Oh, what are you doing?', and I sent him a couple songs that I was working on. I sent him "Your Lips Are Red" and I sent him "All My Stars Aligned", just to show, you know, 'wink-wink, hint-hint, this is what I'm doing.' And he wrote me back, the things that we'd said, and asked to play on the record. So I was, 'Well, okay, if you insist…'
That worked out pretty miraculously.

 

Annie Clark

 

The whole world is in some ways better than it's ever been in the past. And, indeed, I think for many people the meaning of their lives really depends on that belief. If you strip out that belief in progress, if you start thinking of the world in the way in which the ancient pre-Christian Europeans did, or the Buddhists and the Hindus or the Taoists of China do, many people think that's a kind of despair. I don't know how many times I've been told "If I thought that, John, I wouldn't get up in the morning" and "If I agreed with you, John, that history had no pattern of that kind, I wouldn't get up in the morning." I said, "Well, stay in bed a bit longer, you might find a better reason for getting up."

 

John N. Gray

 

Unfortunately, human nature being what it is, the moment the Church was established it became a political organisation, which meant that the consolidation of power and influence quickly became much more important than the message - message? What message? Oh, that message. Of course, yes - and inevitably, this led to bickering about status, and who got to wear the big ring and the fancy hat - you know, the really important stuff - until before long, rival popes were facing each other with massed armies on the battlefield - in the name of Christ, naturally. Even at this point, if Jesus had come back, he would have said: "What are you people doing? I haven't been gone for five minutes and already you're hacking each other to pieces like a bunch of savages! You've missed the point so completely" he'd say, wouldn't he? "You're so far wide of the mark it's way beyond embarrassing" he'd say, "I feel as if I'm talking to chimpanzees" he'd say. No offence, by the way, to any chimps who may be watching. And this is early days, don't forget. Jesus wouldn't yet know anything about all the other horrors that were about to be enacted in his name in the coming years. The Crusades, the Inquisition. He wouldn't know about the systematic suppression of knowledge and free thought that would characterise his church for the next two thousand years. He wouldn't know about the conquest of the New World, where the sacred cross of Jesus slashed and burned its way through entire populations in a way that modern jihadis can only dream about, imposing itself with unparalleled cruelty on civilisations half a world away that, even today, still don't quite know what hit them.

 

Pat Condell

 

I married a woman who loves to camp and I am what you would call indoorsy. I'm surprised we can still get people to camp. "Hey, wanna burn a couple of vacation days sleeping on the ground outside?" "Uh, No!" "What if I told you to get the crap standing up in the woods?" "I still wouldn't wanna go." "You'll wake up freezing covered in a rash." "... All right, I'll go."

 

Jim Gaffigan