Bob Dylan // "The purpose of music is to elevate the spirit and inspire. Not to help push some product down your throat. It puts you in tune with your own existence. Sometimes you really don't know how you feel, but really good music can define how you feel...someone who's telling me where he's been that I haven't and what it's like there...somebody whose life I can feel."
Rainer Maria Rilke // "Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them...the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer."
Henry Miller // "One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things."
John Lewis // "Like so many young people today, I was searching for a way out, or some might say a way in, and then I heard the voice of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. on an old radio. He was talking about the philosophy and discipline of nonviolence. He said we are all complicit when we tolerate injustice. He said it is not enough to say it will get better by and by. He said each of us has a moral obligation to stand up, speak up and speak out. When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself... Voting and participating in the democratic process are key. The vote is the most powerful nonviolent change agent you have in a democratic society. You must use it because it is not guaranteed. You can lose it. You must also study and learn the lessons of history because humanity has been involved in this soul-wrenching, existential struggle for a very long time. People on every continent have stood in your shoes, through decades and centuries before you. The truth does not change, and that is why the answers worked out long ago can help you find solutions to the challenges of our time... Though I may not be here with you, I urge you to answer the highest calling of your heart and stand up for what you truly believe. In my life I have done all I can to demonstrate that the way of peace, the way of love and nonviolence is the more excellent way. Now it is your turn to let freedom ring. When historians pick up their pens to write the story of the 21st century, let them say that it was your generation who laid down the heavy burdens of hate at last and that peace finally triumphed over violence, aggression and war. So I say to you, walk with the wind, brothers and sisters, and let the spirit of peace and the power of everlasting love be your guide."
Zadie Smith // "What modest dreamers we have become."
Björk // "I find workaholism really anti-fertile. For example, in my work with Scandinavian schools with biophilia, it is very apparent that short schooldays and a lot of free time inspires the imagination most and not only makes the kids happier but also they make more original things in the end. I’ve seen how the working until midnight in the biggest cities is really destructive...and you aren’t coming up with any new ideas but just repeating old stuff on a loop."
Philip Glass // "Finally, ultimately, you write...for yourself. I mean, I need a public, I need people to play, I need everything else. I'm not working in isolation. But finally the man...is alone. And I have to respond to those criteria which are almost like inner needs or inner responses."
Henry Miller // "Some day I am going to own a few feet of earth somewhere and put a house over it. Just one big room will do, with a stove and a basin of water, a huge desk, a bookcase and an easel. Then life can go rolling by, and what floats in through my door will be sufficient for me."
Werner Herzog // "We have understood that the destruction of the environment is an enormous danger. But I truly believe that the lack of adequate imagery is a danger of the same magnitude. It is as serious a defect as being without memory. What have we done to our images? What have we done to our embarrassed landscapes? I have said this before and will repeat it again as long as I am able to talk: if we do not develop adequate images we will die out like dinosaurs."
Maya Angelou // "Most people don’t grow up. It’s too damn difficult. What happens is most people get older. That’s the truth of it. They honor their credit cards, they find parking spaces, they marry, they have the nerve to have children, but they don’t grow up. Not really. They get older. But to grow up costs the earth, the earth. It means you take responsibility for the time you take up, for the space you occupy. It’s serious business. And you find out what it costs us to love and to lose, to dare and to fail. And maybe even more, to succeed. What it costs, in truth. Not superficial costs, anybody can have that, I mean in truth."
Tennessee Williams // "Has it ever struck you that life is all memory, except for the one present moment that goes by you so quick you hardly catch it going?"
Nils Frahm // "It’s ok to not join the madness, whatever the madness is. Too many people are afraid to not be part of something. I’ve never really shared that fear. You need to be reckless enough to be like, even if it doesn’t work, I want to do something else."