Tom Waits // "I’m always looking for sounds that are pleasing at the time. The sound of a helicopter is really annoying until you’re drowning, and it’s there to rescue you. Then it sounds like music."
Joseph Brodsky // "By failing to read or listen to poets, society dooms itself to inferior modes of articulation, those of the politician, the salesman or the charlatan. In other words, it forfeits its own evolutionary potential. For what distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom is precisely the gift of speech... Poetry is not a form of entertainment and in a certain sense not even a form of art, but it is our anthropological, genetic goal, our evolutionary, linguistic beacon."
Zadie Smith // I think the hardest thing for anyone is accepting that other people are real as you are. That’s it. Not using them as tools, not using them as examples or things to make yourself feel better or things to get over or under. Just accepting that they are absolutely as real as you are."
Nick Cave // "The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love...just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil."
George Harrison // "I'll tell you one thing for sure: once you get to the point where you're actually doing things for truth's sake, then nobody can ever touch you again because you're harmonizing with a greater power."
Sophia Loren // "Isn't it wonderful to be alive? You know, you can forget all about it. Then suddenly you remember, and think of all the things you can do. Here I am. I can walk around. I can talk. I can see things and remember things. I am alive. How wonderful."
Milton Glaser // "I believe that thinking about the consequences of your work, the issue of ethics, is essential. Since we’re specifically involved in the transmission of cultural ideas, ideas about value, then we have to examine the meaning of what we’re proposing... The issue is not about telling people what they should be doing, but rather trying to make people conscious of what they’re doing. There’s a difference. And what you hope will happen is that a consciousness develops which relates what you do to the society around you. It’s a very old-fashioned idea: what you do has an effect on the world you live in. And if you’re concerned about the state of the world, there is no escape from the fact that you’re participating in it."
Hayao Miyazaki // "I'd like more of the world to go back to being wild."
Carl Sagan // "Extinction is the rule. Survival is the exception."
Haruki Murakami // "Maybe working on the little things as dutifully and honestly as we can is how we stay sane when the world is falling apart."
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."