Witold Gombrowicz // "To me, art almost always speaks more forcefully when it appears in an imperfect, accidental, and fragmentary way, somehow just signaling its presence... I prefer the Chopin that reaches me in the street from an open window to the Chopin served in great style from the concert stage."
Frida Kahlo // "This is how it feels to be in this broken female body. This is how it feels to be alone... This is how it feels to be me. I dare you to look...and once you look, I’m going to make sure you cannot look away."
Anais Nin // "We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations."
John Malkovich // "May your work be compelling and original. May it be profound, touching, contemplative, and unique. May it help us to reflect on the question of what it means to be human, and may that reflection be blessed with heart, sincerity, candor, and grace. May you overcome adversity, censorship, poverty and nihilism, as many of you will most certainly be obliged to do... May you be blessed with the talent and rigor to teach us about the beating of the human heart in all its complexity, and the humility and curiosity to make it your life's work. And may the best of you...for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments...succeed in framing that most basic of questions, 'how do we live?' Godspeed."
Arthur Miller // "I think the job of the artist is to remind people of what they have chosen to forget."
Nick Cave // "Ideas are everywhere and forever available, provided you are prepared to accept them. This takes a certain responsibility to the artistic process. There is discipline and rigour and preparation involved... The sitting comes first, turning up with a certain alertness to possibility. Only then does the idea feel free to settle. It settles small and very tentatively, then, through your active attention, it can grow into something much bigger. Sitting in a readied state can sometimes last a long and anxious time. But you must not despair! I have never found a situation where the idea refuses to come to the prepared mind. While you are in this prepared state, be the thing you want to be. If it is a writer, then write. Initially, stream of consciousness is fine. Write without judgement and self-condemnation. Write playfully and recklessly. Even if this initial writing appears of little value, keep going, for the beautiful idea has awakened and is moving toward you... It is you that it is searching for and you alone. Be yourself. The idea is moving closer."
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."
Aldous Huxley // "It's dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly... Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them...throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you...trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That's why you must walk so lightly...on tiptoes and no luggage...completely unencumbered."
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?"
David Bowie // "I don’t make changes to confuse anyone. I’m just searching. That’s what causes me to change. I’m just searching for myself."
Audrey Hepburn // "If my world were to cave in tomorrow, I would look back on all the pleasures, excitements and worthwhilenesses I have been lucky enough to have had. Not the sadness...but the joy of everything else. It will have been enough."
Marvin Gaye // "I hope to refine music, study it, try to find some area that I can unlock. I don't quite know how to explain it but it's there. These can't be the only notes in the world, there's got to be other notes some place, in some dimension, between the cracks on the piano keys."