James Baldwin // "Most people live in almost total darkness…people, millions of people whom you will never see, who don’t know you, never will know you, people who may try to kill you in the morning, live in a darkness which...if you have that funny terrible thing which every artist can recognize and no artist can define...you are responsible to those people to lighten, and it does not matter what happens to you. You are being used in the way a crab is useful, the way sand certainly has some function. It is impersonal. This force which you didn’t ask for, and this destiny which you must accept, is also your responsibility. And if you survive it, if you don’t cheat, if you don’t lie, it is not only, you know, your glory, your achievement, it is almost our only hope... Because only an artist can tell, and only artists have told since we have heard of man, what it is like for anyone who gets to this planet to survive it. What it is like to die, or to have somebody die; what it is like to be glad... The trouble is that although the artist can do it, the price that he has to pay himself and that you, the audience, must also pay, is a willingness to give up everything, to realize that although you spent twenty-seven years acquiring this house, this furniture, this position, although you spent forty years raising this child, these children, nothing, none of it belongs to you. You can only have it by letting it go. You can only take if you are prepared to give... It is a total risk of everything, of you and who you think you are, who you think you’d like to be, where you think you’d like to go...everything, and this forever, forever."
Hayao Miyazaki // "Whenever someone creates something with all of their heart, then that creation is given a soul."
Brian Eno // "I often think that I don’t have a single new idea in my head. But the big mistake is to just wait for inspiration to happen. It won’t come looking for you. You have to start doing something: you have to build a trap to catch it. I like to do that by starting the very mundane process of tidying my studio. It may seem like it has nothing to do with the creative job in hand but I think tidying up is a form of daydreaming, and what you’re really doing is tidying your mind. It’s a kind of mental preparation. It’s a way of getting your mind in place to notice something. And that’s what being creative is really: it’s noticing when something interesting is starting to happen."
Björk // "I’m not trying to repeat the sagas. I make my own stories and I’m very obsessed with not being nostalgic, because I think that 90 percent of the world is too nostalgic. They don’t have the courage to face the present and make stories that are relevant today, about life today... I want people to do more of that."
James Baldwin // "The place in which I’ll fit will not exist until I make it."
Hayao Miyazaki // "We have a word for that in Japanese. It’s called ma. Emptiness. It’s there intentionally. (claps hands) The time in between my clapping is ma. If you just have non-stop action with no breathing space at all, it’s just busyness. But if you take a moment, then the tension building…can grow into a wider dimension. If you just have constant tension all the time you just get numb… What really matters is the underlying emotions…that you never let go of those."
Anthony Bourdain // "Be a fool. For love. For yourself. What you think might possibly make you happy…even for a little while…whatever the cost or good sense might dictate."
Peter Tosh // "Everyone’s trying to reach the top. Tell me how far is it from the bottom."
Nina Simone // "I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear."
Jane Goodall // "We are the most intellectual creature that has ever walked the planet. But I carefully say intellectual rather than intelligent because if we were intelligent, we would be caring for our only home."
David Bowie // "I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we’ve made of them... The fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey."
Aldous Huxley // "It’s dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly... Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them...throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you...trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That’s why you must walk so lightly...on tiptoes and no luggage...completely unencumbered."
