George Bernard Shaw // "There is the eternal war between those who are in the world for what they can get out of it...and those who are in the world to make it a better place for everybody to live in."
Glen Hansard // "If you’re feeling it, then go for it all the way. If you’re not feeling it, then give it what you can. I think the only thing that’s required of you is to be present, and sometimes that means that you might be a bit angry, or it might be a bit intense. And other times, it might be really mellow. Sometimes it’s hard to know what exactly is required of you, so you have to just go with what you’re feeling. And that’s something I’m kind of learning more and more."
Henri Matisse // "The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer."
Jack Kerouac // "I want to fish as deep down as possible into my own subconscious in the belief that, once that far down, everyone will understand because they are the same that far down."
Meryl Streep // "Put blinders on to the things that conspire to hold you back, especially the ones in your own head."
Anthony Bourdain // "It’s an irritating reality that many places and events defy description...seem to demand silence, like a love affair you can never talk about. For a while after, you fumble for words, trying vainly to assemble a private narrative, an explanation, a comfortable way to frame where you’ve been and what’s happened. In the end, you’re just happy you were there...with your eyes open...and lived to see it."
Jean Cocteau // "If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed."
Henry Miller // "Every day we slaughter our finest impulses. That is why we get a heartache when we read those lines written by the hand of a master and recognize them as our own, as the tender shoots which we stifled because we lacked the faith to believe in our own powers, our own criterion of truth and beauty. Every man, when he gets quiet, when he becomes desperately honest with himself, is capable of uttering profound truths."
Zadie Smith // "And then you begin to give up the very idea of belonging. Suddenly this thing, this belonging, it seems like some long, dirty lie...and I begin to believe that birthplaces are accidents, that everything is an accident. But if you believe that, where do you go? What do you do? What does anything matter? ...The land of accidents sounded like paradise to her. Sounded like freedom."
Jorge Luis Borges // "Don't talk unless you can improve the silence."
Ann Druyan (& Carl Sagan) // "I don't ever expect to be reunited with Carl. But, the great thing is that when we were together, for nearly twenty years, we lived with a vivid appreciation of how brief and precious life is... Every single moment that we were alive and we were together was miraculous...not miraculous in the sense of inexplicable or supernatural. We knew we were beneficiaries of chance... That pure chance could be so generous and so kind... That we could find each other...in the vastness of space and the immensity of time... The way he treated me and the way I treated him, the way we took care of each other and our family, while he lived. That is so much more important than the idea I will see him someday. I don't think I'll ever see Carl again. But I saw him. We saw each other. We found each other in the cosmos, and that was wonderful."
Keanu Reeves // "The simple act of paying attention can take you a long way."