John Szwed: Space is the Place: The Lives and Times of Sun Ra

"I really prefer mythocracy to democracy. . . . Reality equals death, because everything which is real has a beginning and an end. Myth speaks of the impossible, of immortality. And since everything that's possible has been tried, we need to try the impossible."

"God calls the chosen by means of lightning bolts, shafts of sunlight, moving stars and celestial music, where the elect are dressed in robes and lifted to heaven by railroads, ladders and chariots."