David Bowie // “Maybe I’m insane...but I always had a repulsive need to be something more than human.”
Roald Dahl // "I was glad my father was an eye-smiler. It meant he never gave me a fake smile because it's impossible to make your eyes twinkle if you aren't feeling twinkly yourself. A mouth-smile is different. You can fake a mouth-smile any time you want, simply by moving your lips. I've also learned that a real mouth-smile always has an eye-smile to go with it. So watch out...when someone smiles at you but the eyes stay the same. It's sure to be a phony."
Joseph Conrad // "My task is to make you hear, to make you feel, and, above all, to make you see. That is all, and it is everything."
Yayoi Kusama // "Earth, moon, sun and human beings all represent dots; a single particle among billions."
Alexander McQueen // "I design clothes because I don't want women to look all innocent and naive. I want women to look stronger. I don't like women to be taken advantage of. I don't like men whistling at women in the street. I think they deserve more respect. I like men to keep their distance from women, I like men to be stunned by an entrance...I want people to be afraid of the women I dress."
Björk // “Create a paradise anywhere you go.”
Charles Bukowski // "Your life is your life. Don’t let it be clubbed into dank submission. Be on the watch. There are ways out. There is light somewhere. It may not be much light but it beats the darkness. Be on the watch. The gods will offer you chances. Know them. Take them. You can’t beat death but you can beat death in life, sometimes. And the more often you learn to do it, the more light there will be. Your life is your life. Know it while you have it. You are marvelous. The gods wait to delight in you."
Michael Jackson // “Study the greats and become greater.”
Salvador Dali // “I am not strange. I am just not normal.”
Nadya Tolokonnikova // “I think every individual should strive to attain wisdom, to be a philosopher, not just people who happen to have studied philosophy. That’s nothing. Formal education is nothing in itself...I think that the most important thing is the desire to know and to understand, and that’s something people can do for themselves outside of educational establishments.”
James Baldwin // “I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney...waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, ‘Look.’ I looked and all I saw was...water. And he said, ‘Look again,’ which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can’t explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you’ve had that experience, you see differently.”
Patti Smith // “I think they have the right to be concerned. Some of the stuff pawned off as freedom of expression, let alone art, is just trash, just jerking off, with no real duty attached. No seeking to elevate. No self-censorship. No conscience. Things seem too open to me now...I don’t know.”