Federico Fellini // "Money is everywhere but so is poetry. What we lack are the poets."
Man Ray // "Unconcerned but not indifferent."
Larry David // "I'd rather have the thieves than the neighbors...the thieves don't impose. Thieves just want your things, neighbors want your time. I'd rather give them things than time."
Joni Mitchell // "I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty, more and more revelation in my work in order to give it back to the people...where it goes into their lives and nourishes them and changes their direction and makes light bulbs go off in their head and makes them feel... It strikes against the very nerves of their life and in order to do that you have to strike against the very nerves of your own."
Audrey Hepburn // "I believe, every day, you should have at least one exquisite moment."
Charles Bukowski // "Generally speaking, you're free until you're about 4 years old. Then you go to grammar school and then you start becoming...oriented and shoved into areas. You lose what individualism you have. If you have enough of course, you retain some of it... Then you work the 8 hour job with almost a feeling of goodness, like you're doing something. Then you get married like marriage is a victory, and you have children like children is a victory... Marriage, birth, children. It's something they have to do because there's nothing else to do. There's no glory in it, there's no steam, there's no fire. It's very, very flat... You get caught into the stricture of what you're supposed to be and you have no other choice. You're finally molded and melded into what you're supposed to be. I didn't like this."
Jack Nicholson // "You look at someone long enough, you discover their humanity."
Zadie Smith // "When I write I am trying to express my way of being in the world. This is primarily a process of elimination. Once you have removed all the dead language, the second-hand dogma, the truths that are not your own but other people’s, the mottos, the slogans, the out-and-out lies of your nation, the myths of your historical moment. Once you have removed all that warps experience into a shape you do not recognize and do not believe in, what you are left with is something approximating the truth of your own conception."
John Malkovich // "I've permitted myself to learn and to fail with some regularity."
Patti Smith (& Robert Mapplethorpe) // "He asked...'Did art get us?' The question for me wasn't if art got us. The question was, 'Do we regret that?' I know art got us, because if art gets you, you can never be normal. You can never enjoy. You can't go anywhere without trying to transform it, you know? You go to church to pray, and you start writing a story about being in a church praying. You're always observing what you do. I noticed that when I was young going to parties. I could never lose myself...because I was always observing...observing or creating a mental scenario."
Anthony Bourdain // "There is no lying in the kitchen. And no god there, either. He couldn’t help you anyway. You either can...or can’t...make an omelet. You either can...or can’t...chop an onion, shake a pan, keep up with the other cooks, replicate again and again, perfectly, the dishes that need to be done. No credential, no amount of bullshit, no well-formed sentences or pleas for mercy will change the basic facts. The kitchen is the last meritocracy...a world of absolutes; one knows without any ambiguity at the end of each day how one did. 'Good' and 'evil' are easily and instantly recognized for what they are. Good is a cook who shows up on time and does what he said yesterday he was going to do. Evil is a cook who’s full of shit and doesn’t or can’t do what he said he was going to do."
Karl Pilkington // "If I had to give up my mouth or my ears, I'd definitely get rid of my mouth. You learn nothing from your own talking. I know everything I'm going to say, I never surprise myself."