Chinese proverb

There are three truths: my truth, your truth, and the truth.

(An expert in alethiology might question this statement.  I would agree that whenever two people are involved, there is a "my truth" and a "your truth," and rarely are they exactly the same.  I'm not sure that there really is a "the truth" -- but if there is, it is probably different from either "my truth" or "your truth.")

T.I.

You know about me, dog

Don't talk about me, dog

And if you doubt me, dog

You better out me, dog . . .

Know you don't like me 'cause

Yo' bitch most likely does

(From his 2006 hit, "What You Know."  Later in the song, T.I. says "all that attitude's unnecessary, dude."  But T.I. probably has more attitude per cubic inch that any other rapper out there.  One final note: my bitch does like T.I., and it really pisses me off.)

George Eliot

The growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.

(From her greatest novel, Middlemarch.  A few years ago, 125 of the world's most celebrated authors were asked for their "top 10" lists.  Middlemarch ranked #10 -- behind only Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, War and Peace, Lolita, Huckleberry Finn, Hamlet, The Great Gatsby, Remembrance of Things Past, and Chekhov's short stories.)

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Next to the originator of a sentence is the first quoter of it. . . . 

A great man quotes bravely, and will not draw on his invention when his memory serves him with a word just as good. . . . 

By necessity, by proclivity, and by delight, we all quote.

(From his 1876 book, Letters and Social Aims.  I like this Emerson guy, who died on this date in 1882.  He makes a lot of sense.)

The Cure

I try to laugh about it 

Cover it all up with lies 

I try to laugh about it 

Hiding the tears in my eyes 

'Cause boys don't cry 

Boys don't cry 

(The Cure's "Boys Don't Cry," which appeared on the US album of the same name, was released in 1979.  The song inspired the title of the 1999 movie starring Hilary Swank, who won the Oscar for best actress for her performance as a trangendered male who was raped and murdered after his acquaintances discovered he was biologically female.)

Click here to view the official music video for "Boys Don't Cry." 

Here is the trailer for the movie:

David Moore

[Arcade Fire's] search for salvation in the midst of real chaos is ours; their eventual catharsis is part of our continual enlightenment. . . . It's taken perhaps too long for us to reach this point where an album is at last capable of completely and successfully restoring the tainted phrase "emotional" to its true origin. Dissecting how we got here now seems unimportant. It's simply comforting to know that we finally have arrived.

(From his unbelievably overwrought 2004 Pitchfork review of Arcade Fire's first album, Funeral, which scored 9.7 on Pitchfork's 10-point scale -- one of the highest-rated albums in the e-zine's history.  Almost singlehandedly, the Pitchfork review turned an obscure Montreal band into the darlings of the indie music world and helped them sell half a million copies of the album in the first year after it was released.  Arcade Fire's most recent album, The Suburbs, won the Grammy for "Album of the Year" in 2011, beating out megahit albums by Lady Gaga, Lady Antebellum, Eminem, and Katy Perry.)

George Herbert

Awake, my lute, and struggle for thy part with all thy art.
The crosse taught all wood to resound his name, who bore the same.
His stretched sinews taught all strings, what key
Is the best to celebrate this most high day.

(From George Herbert's 1633 poem, "Easter," which was set to music by composer Ralph Vaughn Williams.)