Charles Bukowski // "I don't think it hurts, sometimes, to remember where you came from...They call it '9 to 5.' It's never 9 to 5... And what hurts is the steadily diminishing humanity of those fighting to hold jobs they don't want but fear the alternative worse. People simply empty out. They are bodies with fearful and obedient minds. The color leaves the eye. The voice becomes ugly. And the body. The hair. The fingernails. The shoes. Everything does. As a young man I could not believe that people could give their lives over to those conditions. As an old man, I still can't believe it. What do they do it for? ... An automobile on monthly payments? Or children? Children who are just going to do the same things that they did? ... Now in industry, there are vast layoffs...They are layed off by the hundreds of thousands and their faces are stunned: 'I put in 35 years...It ain't right...I don't know what to do...' They never pay the slaves enough so they can get free, just enough so they can stay alive and come back to work. I could see all this...I figured the park bench was just as good...Why not get there first before they put me there? Why wait? I just wrote in disgust against it all, it was a relief to get the shit out of my system. And now that I'm here, a so-called professional writer, after giving the first 50 years away...the luck I finally had in getting out of those places, no matter how long it took, has given me a kind of joy...I now write from an old mind and an old body, long beyond the time when most men would ever think of continuing such a thing, but since I started so late I owe it to myself to continue, and when the words begin to falter and I must be helped up stairways and I can no longer tell a bluebird from a paperclip, I still feel that something in me is going to remember...how I've come through the murder and the mess and the moil, to at least a generous way to die. To not to have entirely wasted one's life seems to be a worthy accomplishment, if only for myself."
Henri Matisse // "The essential thing is to work in a state of mind that approaches prayer."
Krzysztof Kieslowski // "At a meeting just outside Paris, a fifteen-year-old girl came up to me and said that she'd been to see my movie. She'd gone once, twice, three times and only wanted to say one thing really...that she realized that there is such a thing as a soul. She hadn't known before, but now she knew that the soul does exist. There's something very beautiful in that. It was worth making Véronique for that girl. It was worth working for a year, sacrificing all that money, energy, time, patience, torturing yourself, killing yourself, making thousands of decisions, so that one young girl in Paris should realize that there is such a thing as a soul. It's worth it."
Bertolt Brecht // "The worst illiterate is the political illiterate. He hears nothing, sees nothing, takes no part in political life. He doesn't seem to know that the cost of living, the price of beans, of flour, of rent, of medicines all depend on political decisions. He even prides himself on his political ignorance, sticks out his chest and says he hates politics. He doesn't know, the imbecile, that from his political non-participation comes the prostitute, the abandoned child, the robber and, worst of all, corrupt officials."
//
***Reminder: TOMORROW is the last day to register to vote for the Presidential Primary in South Carolina. Go to www.vote.gov to register in your state. It only takes a few minutes!
If you live in the following states — Alaska, Arizona, Connecticut, Florida, Hawaii, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Maryland, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Washington DC, Wyoming, or citizens abroad — you have a CLOSED primary, which means you MUST be registered either as a Democrat to vote in the Democratic Presidential primary or Republican if voting Republican. If you are currently registered as an Independent, you need to switch to the party of the candidate you want to vote for.
// To see deadlines and to register to vote in your state go to www.vote.gov
James Baldwin // "Most people live in almost total darkness…people, millions of people whom you will never see, who don’t know you, never will know you, people who may try to kill you in the morning, live in a darkness which...if you have that funny terrible thing which every artist can recognize and no artist can define...you are responsible to those people to lighten, and it does not matter what happens to you. You are being used in the way a crab is useful, the way sand certainly has some function. It is impersonal. This force which you didn’t ask for, and this destiny which you must accept, is also your responsibility. And if you survive it, if you don’t cheat, if you don’t lie, it is not only, you know, your glory, your achievement, it is almost our only hope... Because only an artist can tell, and only artists have told since we have heard of man, what it is like for anyone who gets to this planet to survive it. What it is like to die, or to have somebody die; what it is like to be glad... The trouble is that although the artist can do it, the price that he has to pay himself and that you, the audience, must also pay, is a willingness to give up everything, to realize that although you spent twenty-seven years acquiring this house, this furniture, this position, although you spent forty years raising this child, these children, nothing, none of it belongs to you. You can only have it by letting it go. You can only take if you are prepared to give... It is a total risk of everything, of you and who you think you are, who you think you’d like to be, where you think you’d like to go...everything, and this forever, forever."
Kobe Bryant // "I never felt outside pressure. I knew what I wanted to accomplish, and I knew how much work it took to achieve... The expectations I placed on myself were higher than what anyone expected from me."
Philippe Petit // "You must not fall. When you lose your balance...you must not force yourself to stay steady. You must move forward."
Tracey Emin // "Last year I worked a lot on the idea of whether love really exists, whether it’s not just a fantasy but more like an apparition, a ghost. Like, if you think you’ve seen a ghost, then you believe in ghosts; if you haven’t, chances are you don’t believe in ghosts. Love is like that: if you’ve really been in love, then you know love exists, but if you’ve been so crushed by love and then have decided to destroy it and not be hurt by it anymore, it’s very hard to bring it back to life. You’re guarded all the time. Then you start to think: does love really exist or do we just make it up and imagine that it does?"
Virginia Woolf // "The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark."
David Lynch // "People might bring up Vincent van Gogh as an example of a painter who did great work in spite of, or because of, his suffering. I like to think that van Gogh would have been even more prolific and even greater if he wasn’t so restricted by the things tormenting him. I don’t think it was pain that made him so great, I think painting brought him whatever happiness he had."
Frida Kahlo // "What I wanted to express very clearly and intensely was that the reason these people had to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear of death."
Leonard Cohen // "The older you get...the deeper the love you need."
