Maya Angelou // "Let's tell the truth to people. When people ask, 'How are you?'...have the nerve sometimes to answer truthfully. You must know, however, that people will start avoiding you because, they, too, have knees that pain them and heads that hurt and they don't want to know about yours. But think of it this way: If people avoid you, you will have more time to meditate and do fine research on a cure for whatever truly afflicts you."
Rainer Maria Rilke // "The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person’s solitude."
Saul Steinberg // "I think it is very important for people to run away...from home, from the mainstream, from their family, from the culture, from the society that produced them...because the moment I have to learn something new, like new habits, new languages, I myself have something like a rebirth. I reduce myself to the lowest denominator and this is very healthy for an artist. To start all over again."
Charles Bukowski // "For those who believe in God, most of the big questions are answered. But for those of us who can't readily accept the God formula, the big answers don't remain stone-written. We adjust to new conditions and discoveries. We are pliable. Love need not be a command...I am my own god. We are here to unlearn the teachings of the church, state, and our educational system. We are here to drink beer. We are here to kill war. We are here to laugh at the odds and live our lives so well that Death will tremble to take us. We are here to read these words from all these wise men and women who will tell us that we are here for different reasons and the same reason."
James Baldwin // "For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
Malcolm X // "Daring to reach, to climb, to crawl, to scratch, to get back up when you've been knocked down, to push forward, ever forward... It means sacrificing everything, if necessary, to carve out a place for your own existence."
Hunter S. Thompson // "A man who procrastinates in his choosing will inevitably have his choice made for him by circumstance... You have no choice but to accept things as they are, or to seriously seek something else... But beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living within that way of life. But you say, 'I don’t know where to look; I don’t know what to look for.' And there’s the crux. Is it worth giving up what I have to look for something better? I don’t know...is it? Who can make that decision but you? But even by deciding to look, you go a long way toward making the choice."
Nina Simone // "I’ll tell you what freedom is to me: no fear."
David Bowie // "I’m a person who can take on the guises of people I meet. I’m a collector, and I collect personalities and ideas."
Miles Davis // "I'm always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up every morning... Every day I find something creative to do with my life."
Jean Cocteau // "I’ve always preferred mythology to history. Because history is made up of truths which eventually turn into lies, while mythology is made up of lies that eventually become truths. And if I have the good fortune to live on in your minds, it would be in mythological form."
Joan Didion // "I want you to know, as you read me, precisely who I am and where I am and what is on my mind. I want you to understand exactly what you are getting: you are getting a woman who for some time now has felt radically separated from most of the ideas that seem to interest people. You are getting a woman who, somewhere along the line, misplaced whatever slight faith she ever had in the social contract...in the whole grand pattern of human endeavor."