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# Weekend Words: Train
- URL: https://hyperallergic.com/weekend-words-train/
- Published: 2015-11-29T14:50:13.000Z
- Updated: 2025-11-24T16:30:18.000Z
- Description: Today is the 100th birthday of Billy (“Take the A Train”) Strayhorn.
- Author: Weekend Editors
- Tags: Opinion, Weekend, Weekend Words, #wp, #wp-post, #image-position-hidden, #Import 2025-11-24 07:13 (2014, 2015, part 3)

![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/51/f8/51f871d8-b6be-4a73-b958-0ca4fff0110a/content/images/hyperallergic-newspack-s3-amazonaws-com/uploads/2015/11/train.jpg)

Camille Pissarro, “The Train, Bedfork Park” (n.d.), oil on canvas, 54 x 65 cm. Private collection (Image via Web Gallery of Art)

Today is the 100th birthday of Billy (“Take the A Train”) Strayhorn.

> The biggest electric train set any boy has ever had!  
>  
> **—Orson Welles, on the RKO studios**

> I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read in the train.  
>  
> **—Oscar Wilde, *The Importance of Being Earnest***

> My heart is warm with the friends I make,  
> And better friends I’ll not be knowing,  
> Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,  
> No matter where it’s going.  
>  
> **—Edna St. Vincent Millay, “Travel”**

> If you board the wrong train, it is no use running along the corridor in the other direction.  
>  
> **—Dietrich Bonhoeffer**

> Dying should come easy:  
> like a freight train you  
> don’t hear when  
> your back is  
> turned.  
>  
> **—Charles Bukowski, “A Summation”**

> I hear the train a comin’  
> It’s rolling round the bend  
> And I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when,  
> I’m stuck in Folsom prison, and time keeps draggin’ on  
> But that train keeps a rollin’ on down to San Antone…  
>  
> **—Johnny Cash, “Folsom Prison Blues”**

> Friends: not one. Just a few acquaintances who imagine they feel something for me and who might be sorry if a train ran over me and the funeral was on a rainy day  
>  
> **—Fernando Pessoa, *The Book of Disquiet***

> Is there anything in the world sadder  
> than a train standing in the rain?  
>  
> **—Pablo Neruda, *The Book of Questions***

> We feel the machine slipping from our hands  
> As if someone else were steering;  
> If we see the light of at the end of the tunnel,  
> It’s the light of an oncoming train.  
>  
> **—Robert Lowell, “Since 1939”**

> Commuter–one who spends his life  
> In riding to and from his wife;  
> A man who shaves and takes the train,  
> And rides it back to shave again.  
>  
> **—E. B. White, “The Commuter”**

> Only by the good influence of our conduct may we bring salvation in human affairs; or like a fatal comet we may bring destruction in our train.  
>  
> **—Desiderius Erasmus**

> Mickey Mouse popped out of my mind onto a drawing pad 20 years ago on a train ride from Manhattan to Hollywood at a time when business fortunes of my brother Roy and myself were at lowest ebb and disaster seemed right around the corner.  
>  
> **—Walt Disney**

> I was the conductor of the Underground Railroad for eight years, and I can say what most conductors can’t say; I never ran my train off the track and I never lost a passenger.  
>  
> **—Harriet Tubman**

> How long babe how long  
> has that evenin’ train been gone?  
> How long, how-how long, baby how long?  
>  
> **—Leroy Carr, “How Long, How Long Blues”**