The list linked to in the last post, (and Hugh's entire manifesto series) has encouraged me to offer up something which I was coincidentally reading last night. It's take from a 1978 RollingStone interview with Bob Dylan.

In it Jonathan Cott says to Dylan:

I wanted to read you two Hasidic texts that somehow remind me of your work. The first says that in the service of God, one can learn three things from a child and seven from a thief. "From a child you can learn:

1. Always to be happy
2. Never sit idle
3. Cry for everything one wants

From a thief you should learn:

1. To work at night
2. If one cannot gain what one wants in one night to try again the next night
3. To love one's coworkers just as thieves love each other
4. To be willing to risk one's life even for a little thing
5. Not to attach too much value to things even though one has risked one's life for them - just as a thief will resell a stolen article for a fraction of it's real value
6. To withstand all kinds of beatings and tortures but to remain what you are
7. To believe that your work is worthwhile and not be willing to change it

Cott then reads the second one:

Another Hasidic rabbi once said that you can learn something from everything. Even from a train, a telephone, and a telegram. From a train, he said, you can learn that in one second one can miss everything. From a telephone you can learn that what you say over hear can be heard over there. And from a telegram that all words are counted and charged.

So until I write one myself, this plagiarism will have to stand as my contribution to the other thought-provoking pieces in Hugh's series.