Virginia Woolf // "She could be herself, by herself. And that was what now she often felt the need of...to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedge-shaped core of darkness, something invisible to others...and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures."
Timothy Leary // "Emotions are the lowest form of consciousness... The only state in which we can learn, harmonize, grow, merge, join, understand is the absence of emotion. This is called bliss or ecstasy, attained through centering the emotions... Conscious love is not an emotion; it is serene merging with yourself, with other people, with other forms of energy. Love cannot exist in an emotional state... The great kick of the mystic experience, the exultant, ecstatic hit, is the sudden relief from emotional pressure. Emotions are closely tied to ego games. Check your emotions at the door to paradise."
David Wojnarowicz // "I lean back and tilt my head so all I see are the clouds in the sky. I'm looking back inside my head with my eyes wide open. I still don't know where I'm going; I decided I'm not crazy or alien. It's just that I'm more like one of those kids they find in remote jungles or forests. A wolf child. And they've dragged me into this fucking schizo-culture, snarling and spitting and walking around on curled knuckles."
Frida Kahlo // "I think that little by little I'll be able to solve my problems and survive."
Salvador Dali // "Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dali."
Vincent van Gogh // "What am I in the eyes of most people...a nonentity, an eccentric, or an unpleasant person...somebody who has no position in society and will never have; in short, the lowest of the low. All right, then...even if that were absolutely true, then I should one day like to show by my work what such an eccentric, such a nobody, has in his heart... Though I am often in the depths of misery, there is still calmness, pure harmony and music inside me."
Muhammad Ali // "Often it isn't the mountains ahead that wear you out, it's the little pebble in your shoe."
Ernest Hemingway // "You must be prepared to work always without applause."
Carl Jung // "Whenever we touch nature we get clean. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a bath in the sea. Entering the unconscious, entering yourself through dreams, is touching nature from the inside and this is the same thing, things are put right again."
Patti Smith // "That's what artists do, that's what poets do...we all do it. We start with something, and sometimes we destroy everything that we've made in order to get to the core place where we started from."
James Baldwin // "I can't be a pessimist, because I'm alive. To be a pessimist means that you have agreed that human life is an academic matter, so I'm forced to be an optimist. I am forced to believe that we can survive whatever we must survive."
Anthony Bourdain // "Everybody should come here. Everyone should see how complicated, how deeply troubled, and yet at the same time, beautiful and awesome the world can be. Everyone should experience, even as the clouds gather, what's at stake, what could be lost, what's still here."