NITCH

Photo of Coco Chanel

Coco Chanel // "I invented my life by taking for granted that everything I did not like would have an opposite, which I would like."

Photo of Carlo Scarpa

Carlo Scarpa // "If the architecture is any good, a person who looks and listens will feel its good effects without noticing."

Photo of Colette

Colette // "I love my past. I love my present. I am not ashamed of what I have had, and I am not sad because I no longer have it."

Photo of Rei Kawakubo

Rei Kawakubo // "I want to see things differently...I want to find something that nobody has ever found...it is meaningless to create something predictable."

Photo of Paul McCartney

Paul McCartney // John Lennon

Photo of Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov // "Self-education is, I firmly believe, the only kind of education there is."

Photo of Nawal El Saadawi

Nawal El Saadawi // "To be creative means to connect. It's to abolish the gap between the body, the mind and the soul, between science and art, between fiction and nonfiction."

Photo of Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami // "Before human beings possessed fire or tools or language, the moon had been their ally. It would calm people's fears now and then by illuminating the dark world like a heavenly lantern. Its waxing and waning gave people an understanding of the concept of time. Even now, when darkness had been banished from most parts of the world, there remained a sense of human gratitude toward the moon and its unconditional compassion. It was imprinted upon human genes like a warm collective memory."

Photo of Mos Def

Mos Def // "What I take from writers I like is their economy—their ability to use language to very effective ends. The ability...for somebody to paint an entire landscape of visual imagery with just sheets of words—that's magical. That's what I've been trying to strive for..."

Photo of Pablo Neruda

Pablo Neruda // "To look for originality at all costs is a modern condition...Each person tries to find a road whereby he will stand out, neither for profundity nor for discovery, but for the imposition of a special diversity. The most original artist will change phases in accord with the time, the epoch."

Photo of Greta Garbo

Greta Garbo // "Is there anything better than to be longing for something, when you know it is within reach?"

Photo of J. Robert Oppenheimer

J. Robert Oppenheimer // "There must be no barriers to freedom of inquiry...The scientist is free, and must be free to ask any question, to doubt any assertion, to seek for any evidence, to correct any errors. Our political life is also predicated on openness...as long as men are free to ask what they must, free to say what they think, free to think what they will, freedom can never be lost, and science can never regress."