Rick Rubin // "I never decide if an idea is good or bad until I try it. So much of what gets in the way of things is thinking that we know. And the more that we can remove any baggage we're carrying with us, and just be in the moment, use our ears, and pay attention to what's happening, and just listen to the inner voice that directs us, the better."
Marcel Marceau // "I don't want our youth to become anti-romantic. We have to make room for the soul."
Leonard Cohen // "You just want to indicate that curious thing that we call 'experience'... It's something in the voice itself. It indicates that the person has been through a life, that they have lived their life on the front line. And that's the sound we like...I like...to hear... It includes optimism. It includes despair. It includes regret. It includes so many things that you forget about all of them, and you just know that you're listening to a voice...a voice of experience."
David Bowie // "I wanted to express...a wish to destroy everything that we have ever created. When Nietzsche said 'God is dead,' it was a culmination of all the thoughts of the previous century...people were so aggrandized with their sense of science and the aftermath of the enlightenment and how man himself could improve the world. Then of course, it led to things like...Einstein’s discovery that time and space aren’t what we thought they were, and Freud in understanding another kind of human inside the human. All of these things culminated in the idea that everything we’ve known before was wrong. Everything. So we start the 20th century with this clean slate. We are now the Gods. And the greatest thing that we could do as God during that century was create the bomb. That was what we were good at doing. And I think that in itself...the repercussions of what we had done by standing in for this idea of morality, creating it all ourselves, so destroyed our fix on what we should be doing in life that we’re still living through that chaos right now. We have no spiritual lives to speak of...there is no direct sense of what our purpose is anymore. Now that may be a good thing because it may show itself to be that we, in fact, don’t have a purpose. Are we big enough or mature enough to exist like that? Are we mature enough to accept that there is no 'plan,' there is no 'going somewhere,' there is no gift of immortality at the end of this if we evolve... Maybe we have to exist and live on the idea that we have one day at a time to live...and can we do that? Because if we could do that, we may be serving some, really, some great thing."
John Lewis // "I have been beaten, my skull fractured, and arrested more than forty times so that each and every person has the right to register and vote. Friends of mine gave their lives. Do your part. Get out there and vote like you’ve never voted before."
Simone Weil // "Everybody knows that really intimate conversation is only possible between two or three. As soon as there are six or seven, collective language begins to dominate."
Max Ernst // "When the artist finds himself he is lost. The fact that he has succeeded in never finding himself is...his only lasting achievement."
Francoise Sagan // "I always wanted to ask people: 'Are you in love? What are you reading?'"
James Baldwin // "It is rare indeed that people give. Most people guard and keep; they suppose that it is they themselves and what they identify with themselves that they are guarding and keeping, whereas what they are actually guarding and keeping is their system of reality and what they assume themselves to be."
Claude Monet // "I'm continuing to work hard, not without periods of discouragement, but my strength comes back again."
Roald Dahl // "If you are interested in something, no matter what it is, go at it full speed ahead. Embrace it with both arms, hug it, love it and above all become passionate about it. Lukewarm is no good. Hot is no good either. White hot and passionate is the only thing to be."
Henry Miller // "An age such as ours is the most difficult one of all for an artist. There is no place for him. At least, that is what one hears on all sides. Nevertheless, some few artists of our time have made a place for themselves. Picasso made a place for himself. Joyce made a place for himself. Matisse made a place for himself. Celine made a place for himself. Should I rattle off the whole list?... Those who are perpetually talking about the inability to communicate with the world, have they made every effort? Have they learned how to be as wise and cunning as the serpent, as well as strong and obstinate as a bull? Or are they braying like donkeys, whining about some ideal condition in the ever-receding future when every man will be recognized and rewarded for his labors? Do they really expect such a day to dawn, these simple souls? I feel that I have some right to speak about the difficulty of establishing communication with the world since my books are banned in the only countries where I can be read in my own tongue. I have enough faith in myself however to know that I eventually will make myself heard, if not understood. Everything I write is loaded with the dynamite which will one day destroy the barriers erected about me. If I fail it will be because I did not put enough dynamite into my words. And so, while I have the strength and the gusto I will load my words with dynamite... You want to communicate. All right, communicate! Use any and every means."