The white youth of today have begun to react to the fact that the “American Way of Life” is a fossil of history. What do they care if their old baldheaded and crew-cut elders don’t dig their caveman mops? They couldn’t care less about the old, stiffassed honkies who don’t like their new dances: Frug, Monkey, Jerk, Swim, Watusi. All they know is that it feels good to swing to way-out body-rhythms instead of dragassing across the dance floor like zombies to the dead beat of mind-smothered Mickey Mouse music.
—Eldridge Cleaver (b. 1935)
Nelse McLeod: Faith can move mountains Milt, but it can’t beat a faster draw. There’s only three men I know with his kind of speed—one’s dead, the other’s me, and the third is Cole Thornton.
Cole Thornton: There’s a fourth.
McLeod: Which one are you?
Thornton: I’m Thornton.
—Leigh Brackett (1915–1978)
I told you, sir, they were red-hot with drinking;
So full of valour that they smote the air,
For breathing in their faces, beat the ground
For kissing of their feet.
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)