Oscar Wilde // "Don’t imagine that your perfection lies in accumulating or possessing external things... Ordinary riches can be stolen from a man. Real riches cannot... And so, try to so shape your life that external things will not harm you. And try also to get rid of personal property... Personal property hinders individualism at every step."
Mary Oliver // "Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?"
Robert Downey Jr. // "Listen, smile, agree, and then do whatever the fuck you were gonna do anyway."
Helen Keller // "What we have once enjoyed we can never lose. All that we love deeply becomes a part of us."
Satchel Paige // "How old would you be if you didn't know how old you are?"
Klaus Kinski // "Open up, let go. Let anything penetrate you, even the most painful things. Endure. Bear up. That's the magic key... You mustn't let scar tissue form on your wounds; you have to keep ripping them open in order to turn your insides into a marvelous instrument that is capable of anything."
Derek Cianfrance // "When I was a kid, I used to always think people lived on islands. I used to think that it was strange, like when people used to come over to my house...that we would all change inside my house, and then when the company would leave, we would all go back to being real again and being truthful... And so I went around my whole life driving down the street, seeing a house, thinking...that's an island and that's an island...and that every family was an isolated set of secrets."
Hazrat Inayat Khan // "Some people look for a beautiful place, others make a place beautiful."
Audrey Hepburn // "You have to look at yourself objectively. Analyze yourself like an instrument. You have to be absolutely frank with yourself. Face your handicaps, don't try to hide them. Instead, develop something else."
Brian Eno // "People...often want to aim for the biggest, most obvious target, and hit it smack in the bull's eye. Of course with everyone else aiming there as well that makes it very hard and expensive to hit. I prefer to shoot the arrow, then paint the target around it. You make the niches in which you finally reside."
Frank Ocean // "We all know we have a finite period of time. I just feel if I'm going to be alive, I want to be challenged - to be as immortal as possible. The path to that isn't an easy way, but it's a rewarding way."
J.D. Salinger // "Among other things, you'll find that you're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score, you'll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry."