quote/unquote: Ron Artest, Huston Smith, Tennessee Williams and a song snippet by Bernie Taupin & Elton John

"He was the best player I played against, outside of a guy from my hood, Queensbridge, Mike Chapworth (sp?), he went to jail for a couple of years, I played him when we were 15 or 16, he was the best player I played against, now it's Roy."
--- Ron Artest on TNT (and youtube) saying Portland's Brandon Roy is the best player he ever guarded, leaving Kobe Bryant and LeBron James off that list, both players he's guarded recently.

"I begin by asking myself, 'What is my mood? How are my feelings?' I try to understand myself because we have it on good authority from the Holy Qur'an that 'he who knoweth himself knoweth the Lord.' The answer I came up with was, 'I'm fine, I'm happy. I'm well. And I'm grateful."
--- Huston Smith, author of "The World's Religions", quoted in Newsweek as he turned 90

"So, finally we are left with the simple faiths of our childhoods, unacceptable to a mature person, or to -- what? What, indeed. The trivial distractions of daily and nightly existence with which we obscure the hushed but giant footsteps of our approaching end? The practice of meditation in solitude and, through it, the slow, the marvelously stoical transcendence of bodily self and its concerns? I am certainly aware of the attractions in this Far East way of reconciling one's self to the end of being one's self, but I am too Occidental a creature to follow it through without an opium pipe.....Not long ago we dined with a very talented young black who was writing a history of jazz and popular music in Harlem. During the course of the meal he made such a wise and amusingly 'black' remark, that I wrote it down on a paper napkin. 'God don't come when you want Him but He's right on time.'"
---- "Memoirs" by Tennessee Williams (1975)

"I'm a juvenile product of the working class
whose best friend floats in the bottom of a glass."
---- "Saturday Night's Allright for Fighting" by bernie taupin/elton john