Salvador Dali // "Where is the real? All appearance are deceitful, the visible surface is deceptive. I look at my hand...it is nerves, muscles, bones. Let us go deeper: it is molecules and acids. Further still: it is an impalpable waltz of electrons and neutrons. Further still: an immaterial nebula. Who can prove that my hand exists?"
Frida Kahlo // "Nothing is worth more than laughter. It is strength to laugh and to abandon oneself, to be light."
Janis Joplin // "I'm just doing what I wanted to and what feels right and not settling for bullshit."
Hayao Miyazaki // "I've become skeptical of the unwritten rule that just because a boy and girl appear in the same feature, a romance must ensue. Rather, I want to portray a slightly different relationship, one where the two mutually inspire each other to live—if I'm able to, then perhaps I'll be closer to portraying a true expression of love."
E.E. Cummings // "Almost anybody can learn to think or believe or know, but not a single human being can be taught to feel. Why? Because whenever you think or you believe or you know, you’re a lot of other people: but the moment you feel, you’re nobody-but-yourself. To be nobody-but-yourself...in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else...means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
Albert Camus // "When I was young, I expected people to give me more than they could give: never-ending friendship and constant excitement. Now I expect less than they can actually give: to stay close silently. And their feelings, their friendship, their noble deeds always seem like a miracle to me: a true grace."
Paul Éluard // "There is another world, and it is in this one."
Joan Didion // "People with self-respect exhibit a certain toughness, a kind of moral nerve; they display what was once called character...character—the willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life."
Maya Angelou // "We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty."
Leonard Cohen // "We are not mad. We are human. We want to love, and someone must forgive us for the paths we take to love, for the paths are many and dark, and we are ardent and cruel in our journey."
David Lynch // "I hate slick and pretty things. I prefer mistakes and accidents. Which is why I like things like cuts and bruises...they're like little flowers. I've always said that if you have a name for something, like 'cut' or 'bruise,' people will automatically be disturbed by it. But when you see the same thing in nature, and you don't know what it is, it can be very beautiful."
Henry Miller // "From the little reading I had done I had observed that the men who were most in life, who were molding life, who were life itself, ate little, slept little, owned little or nothing. They had no illusions about duty, or the perpetuation of their kith and kin, or the preservation of the State. They were interested in truth and in truth alone. They recognized only one kind of activity...creation."