Tom Waits // "Don't plant your bad days. They grow into weeks. The weeks grow into months. Before you know it you got yourself a bad year. Take it from me. Choke those little bad days. Choke 'em down to nothin'. They're your days. Choke 'em!"
Leonard Cohen // "You’ve got to be serious about what you do. And you’ve got to understand the price you pay for frivolity or just for greed...it’s a very high price, especially if you’re involved in this sacred material, which is about the human heart and human desire and human tragedy. If there isn’t some element of seriousness in the training of the artist or in the atmosphere that surrounds the enterprise, then this shabbiness grows and eventually overwhelms it. I think that’s what we’re in now."
Nick Cave // "A friend called our new world 'a ghost ship'...and maybe she is right. She has recently lost someone dear to her and recognises acutely the premonitory feeling of a world about to be shattered...and that we will need to put ourselves back together again, not only personally, but societally. In time we will be given the opportunity to either contract around the old version of ourselves and our world...insular, self-interested and tribalistic...or understand the connectedness and commonality of all humans, everywhere. In isolation, we will be presented with our essence...of what we are personally and what we are as a society. We will be asked to decide what we want to preserve about our world and ourselves, and what we want to discard. Eventually these questions will become of acute significance, but they are not for now. Now is a time to listen to those in more informed positions and to follow instructions, as difficult as that may be, as we step into the unprecedented unknowable. We should be careful about the noises we make...especially those with a public voice...and should not pretend to know what we do not. From within the clamour and tonnage of information and misinformation, of opinions and counter-opinions, of blame-games and grim prophecy and the most panic-inducing version of 'Imagine' ever recorded, emerges a simple message...wash your hands and (if you can) stay at home."
James Baldwin // "The role of the artist is exactly the same role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of things you don't see."
Ingmar Bergman // "I am living permanently in my dream, from which I make brief forays into reality."
Nina Simone // "What kept me sane was knowing that things would change, and it was a question of keeping myself together until they did."
Bob Dylan // "You have to work out where your place is. And who you are. But we're all spirit. That's all we are, we're just walking dressed up in a suit of skin, and we're going to leave that behind."
Frida Kahlo // "I never thought of painting until...I was in bed on account of an automobile accident. I was bored as hell in bed with a plaster cast... I stole from my father some oil paints, and my mother ordered for me a special easel because I couldn’t sit up, and I started to paint."
Joan Didion // "We imagine things...that we wouldn't be able to survive, but in fact, we do survive. We have no choice, so we do it."
Kazuo Ohno // "What can you teach? Not art, that's impossible. Contrary to the common view, art can't be taught. I believe that a piece of work comes out naturally from a human being just like one human being comes out of another... You must have life coming out of you."
Katharine Hepburn // "If you always do what interests you, at least one person is pleased."
Kurt Vonnegut // "Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow... The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don’t show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward."