You've got to put up with the rain."

And people say she's just a big pair of tits.

I can play hide and seek with my fears/ And live my days instead of counting my years.

That sounds wise to me.

Actual answer?

Every rose has it's thorn, just like every night has it's dawn, just like every cowboy sings his sad sad song

Dude.

But you can put the hoover round if you want to make a start

B. Bragg

Vice is a virtue with cameras and curfews

Oh to all the people that I might have offended
You probably needed it, so take your cake and eat it

E. Harcourt

"It doesn´t mean that much to me to mean that much to you"

From Neil Young´s Old Man. It strikes a chord.

I do love my friends and they mean a lot to me, but I´ve never felt the need to make friends with everybody. I´m not trying to use this as an excuse to be mean to people. You know, in that sort of "I´m just saying what´s on my mind" kind of way that some people tend to do.

But it is possible to walk smiling through life without being loved by everyone.

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"

and

"When you've got nothing, you've got nothing to lose"

Or so I have read.

I'm reaching out on all sides, I'm grabbing at the truth instead of lies.
I want it said when I am gone: I moved the world just one step on

But if you try, you just might find you get what you need.

Ten years have gone behind you -
No one told you when to run,
You missed the starting gun."

I've been trying to avoid that pitfall since I first heard the lyric so it's clearly had an impact. And it's still a great song.

From Laughing by David Crosby

"I thought I met a man, who say he knew a man who knew what was going on.
I was mistaken."

Yours And My Children

"The idea of races has no factual basis
It was made just to serve racists
To justify to doing to some what couldn¹t be done
To others, but they all are our sons"

"So if some were superior, others inferior, based on exterior
Well then surely the sun would know and fall in to line?
It would rain on your crops and not mine?
Air would prefer to inhabit your lungs?
Food would prefer the taste of your tongue?
If that¹s not the case then nature has declared
Despite what we say the worlds in fact fair"

Fantastic way with words that really hit home on such a deep topic.

but I think thats well understood

Alopbamboo
Just about says it all

So hard to beat.

I love the 'not everything that can be measured matters and not everything that matters can be measured'ness of it.

Felt very true to me when I was clubbing years ago, feels very true to me now that I'm embarking on a new career as a counsellor.

Two lyrics from The River have always resonated with me, more so as I've got older:

"Once I spent my time playing tough guy scenes
But I was living in a world of childish dreams
Someday these childish dreams must end
To become a man and grow up to dream again"
(Two hearts)

and

"Is a dream a lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse?"
(The River)

Bruce has always been good on the difference between things as they are and things as we'd like them to be, and how we perceive that difference.

but she sends me there.

Not a lyric but a line from 'Head'.....
'The tragedy of your times, my young friends, is that you may get exactly what you want'.

gave Rock and Roll to you...

And when no hope was left in sight
on that starry starry night.
You took your life as lovers often do;
But I could have told you Vincent
this world was never meant
for one as beautiful as you.

never got into heroin, I guess I wanna live.

Gonna get a house one day, find a wife, raise a family
but that don't mean you have to die.

in the 2009 concerts ' I have stumbled on the answer'

which is 'Doo Dum Dum Dum Dee Doo Dum Dum'

from the ending of The Tower of Song

...la la la la la la la...
Yeah, you're gonna be remembered for the things that you say and do...
...la la la la la la la...

From the unbeatable final scene of "Bugsy Malone".

[I suspect all the comments above about HJH's "The End" apply to these lines too. But I still like 'em.]

That goes some way to verbalising my life in lyrics. Some may see 6th form noodling, some may not but it works for me.

On love

"A familiar face with a loving smile greets you every day
And failure seeps a little deeper through your life
Yeah sure you gave some girl your heart, but you never used it anyway"

"Don't get so distressed
If the good life won't arrive
You've been reading S.O.S.
When it's just your clock reading 5:05
And why are you so possessed
By the thought that she got free
And why are you figuring who's the best
When just your luck ran out
and she chose me"

On Life

"A struck match faded like a nervous laugh
Beyond the halo of a naked bulb
Your low voice mingles with your other half's
Schoolfriends in second-hand clothes
Eventually your world will shrink within four walls
Of neglected debts and stolen stereos."

"Checkout calamity, you're cheated out of loyalty points,
Ten more years at this joint you'd be home & dry,
Beggars beat round the cash machines but you just
Slip between them with the usual lie.
Terrible tales of kidnapped kids keep you
Focused on the family and filling up the fridge,
Neighbourhood watchers shop dole dodgers, stick their
Semis on the market & start racking up the bids."

take a little love
Be prepared to forsake a little love
and when the sun comes shining through
you'll know what to do."
Sage advice there..

...the Prince on the horse in your fairytale
Is right here in disguise

Carly Simon

Saved me from a lot of bother, that one has.

...where the huskies go
and don't you eat that yellow snow

Frank Zappa

...and all you're left with is a round of make-believe....

In McCartney’s song Young Boy from Flaming Pie (1997) there are 2 lines he repeats several times:

Find love
And love will come looking for you.

It took a while for these lines to register with me. When you hear the first line you think he’s talking about finding someone to love you. But when you put it together with the second line you realize he’s saying first love, and then you will be loved.

When I finally figured that out, I realized he was saying the same thing he’d said in The End, 28 years earlier.

And I have to say, it made me think.

In that classic SNL ‘interview’ with Chris Farley Paul explains the meaning of the 'and in the end' lines by saying he’s found in life that the more you give, the more you get. There's no way to prove whether it's objectively true all the time for everybody, but I guess he feels it's true for him. And it does make you think about how you approach life.

and see how they roll
the answer they reveal
life is unreal

Thank you Uncle Donald and Auntie Walter

It's so easy to laugh
It's so easy to hate
It takes guts to be gentle and kind

Happy talk, keep talking happy talk;
Talk about things you like to do.
You've got to have a dream -
If you don't have a dream
How you gonna have a dream come true?

Maybe it's my clothes must be to blame
I don't even care if I look a mess
Don't want to be a sucker like all the rest.

When you know I've been a liar all my life?

Of all god's creatures man must be
The most slimy and slippery.
There stands the naked ape in a monkey suit
Behind a little mustache he grew, the shifty brute.
All those not choking on the words they ate
Are sweating on getting their stories straight.

All men. All men are liars.
Their words ain't worth no more than worn out tyres.
Hey girls, bring rusty pliers to pull this tooth
All men are liars and that's the truth.

I saw two shooting stars last night
I wished on them
But they were only satellites
It's wrong to wish on space hardware

plus

Once upon a time at home
I sat beside the telephone
Waiting for someone to pull me through
When at last it didn't ring I knew it wasn't you

Teenage-me could have done worse than actually pay attention to those lines when listening to the song over and over...

I'm seeing them tonight. It would be great if someone came on at the beginning and said this.

No...come back...

That you ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously
Cos it's only life after all.

I'm so tired of being tired
Sure as night will follow day
Most things I worry about
Never happen anyway

"Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans"

I know it's a bit of a cliche and on a million posters, but it is still wise and it's still true.

'He who's not busy bein' born is a busy dyin'

by making his world a little colder.'