Bowery Quotes

It's nowhere near as intense as what I imagine an actor experiences backstage, but I feel a fluttering nervousness before a curtain goes up on a play. I mean, any play, anywhere - on Broadway or the Bowery or in a church basement. (Ben Brantley)

The Bowery was a place that would let us do original songs - not just covers - but we would have to work for tips, so we learned how to work an audience. In order to keep our jobs, we had to keep people happy, so that meant playing the latest Lynyrd Skynyrd and ZZ Top or Merle Haggard.

Randy Owen

I know that I come from mid-20th century America, urban, specifically downtown New York, specifically an Italian-American area, Roman Catholic - that's who I am. And a part of what I know is there's a decency to people who tried to make a living in the kind of world that was around us and also the Skid Row area of the Bowery; it impressed me.

Martin Scorsese

There was a belief after World War I that painting could be an act of civil revolt. I want this exhibition, 'New Museum,' to be an act of civil disobedience. It's not so much about the New Museum on the Bowery, but the idea of challenging museums as projections of cultural authority. It's painting as insurgency.

Richard Phillips

Our original name was Wild Country, but when we first went to The Bowery, they had the name of all 50 states around the edge of the club, so we went to the sign that said 'Alabama' and stuck our band name underneath it.

Randy Owen

Then I moved down to the Bowery to this building where Debbie Harry lived. It was there that I started combining some clothes for her and continued doing the art and photography.

Stephen Sprouse

For my part, I believe that the vain, glorious and the violent will not inherit the earth.... In pursuance of that faith my friends and I take the hands of the dying in our hands. And some of us travel to the Pentagon, and others live in the Bowery and serve there, and others speak unpopularly and plainly of the fate of the unborn and of convicted criminals. It is all one.

Daniel Berrigan

I am going a long way With these thou sestif indeed I go (For all my mind is clouded with a doubt) To the island-valley of Avilion, Where falls not hail or rain or any snow, Nor ever wind blows loudly but it lies Deep-meadow'd, happy, fair with orchard lawns And bowery hollows crown'd with summer sea, Where I will heal me of my grievous wound.

Alfred, Lord Tennyson

MEDICINE, n. A stone flung down the Bowery to kill a dog in Broadway.

Ambrose Bierce