NITCH

Photo of Jean Cocteau

Jean Cocteau // "My hair has always grown in all directions and my teeth too and my beard. My nerves and my soul must surely grow in the same way. That is what makes me incomprehensible to those who grow all in one direction...they do not know how to take me. This organic disorder is a safeguard for me because it keeps the thoughtless at distance."

Photo of Bill Murray

Bill Murray // "The more relaxed you are, the better you are at everything: the better you are with your loved ones, the better you are with your enemies, the better you are at your job, the better you are with yourself."

Photo of Björk

Björk // "In my most natural state, I'll be introverted for say, six days in a row, and then on the seventh day I'll become very extroverted... Then I'll have to go back inside myself... It's something I can't really control. It's a bit like the ocean and the tides."

Photo of Noam Chomsky

Noam Chomsky // "Optimism is a strategy for making a better future. Because unless you believe that the future can be better, it’s unlikely you will step up and take responsibility for making it so. If you assume that there’s no hope, you guarantee that there will be no hope. If you assume that there is an instinct for freedom, there are opportunities to change things, there’s a chance you may contribute to making a better world. The choice is yours."

Photo of Claude Monet

Claude Monet // "My aim is to give you only the things with which I am completely satisfied, even if it means asking you a little more time for them...for if I were to do otherwise I'd turn into a mere painting machine and you would be landed with a pile of incomplete work."

Photo of Viggo Mortensen

Viggo Mortensen // "One of the best pieces of advice I ever got was: go slow to go fast. We live as though there aren't enough hours in the day but if we do each thing calmly and carefully we will get it done quicker and with much less stress."

Photo of Janis Joplin

Janis Joplin // "There isn't going to be a turning point...There isn't going to be any next-month-it'll-be-better, next fucking year, next fucking life. You don't have any time to wait for. You just got to look around you and say: So this is it. This is really all there is to it... Everybody just needing such little things and they can't get them. Everybody needing just a little...confidence from somebody else... Everybody, you know, like reaching out tentatively but drawing back...it seems like such a shame. It's so close to being, like, really right and good and open."

Photo of Bill Nye

Bill Nye // "The moon is out all day. I don't want to shock you."

Photo of Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick // "If you really want to communicate something, even if it’s just an emotion or an attitude, let alone an idea, the least effective and least enjoyable way is directly. It only goes in about an inch. But if you can get people to the point where they have to think a moment what it is you’re getting at, and then discover it, the thrill of discovery goes right through the heart."

Photo of Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski // "We are always asked to understand the other person’s viewpoint no matter how out-dated, foolish or obnoxious. One is asked to view their total error, their life-waste with kindliness, especially if they are aged. But age is the total of our doing. They have aged badly because they have lived out of focus, they have refused to see. Not their fault? Whose fault? Mine? I am asked to hide my viewpoint from them for fear of their fear. Age is no crime, but the shame of a deliberately wasted life among so many deliberately wasted lives, is."

Photo of Jean-Paul Sartre

Jean-Paul Sartre // "There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours."

Photo of Robin Williams

Robin Williams // "We don't read and write poetry because it's cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. So medicine, law, business, engineering...these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love...these are what we stay alive for."