Le Corbusier // "You employ stone, wood and concrete, and with these materials you build houses and palaces. That is construction... But suddenly you touch my heart, you do me good, I am happy and I say: This is beautiful. That is Architecture. Art enters in."
Jean Dubuffet // "For me, insanity is super sanity. The normal is psychotic. Normal means lack of imagination, lack of creativity."
Alber Elbaz // "You know, it’s not about screaming, it’s about whispering. When you scream everybody hears, but not everybody listens. When you whisper maybe not too many people can hear you, but it goes deeper."
Oliver Sacks // "Why is it that of every hundred gifted young musicians who study at Juilliard or every hundred brilliant young scientists who go to work in major labs under illustrious mentors, only a handful will write memorable musical compositions or make scientific discoveries of major importance? Are the majority, despite their gifts, lacking in some further creative spark? Are they missing characteristics other than creativity that may be essential for creative achievement...such as boldness, confidence, independence of mind? It takes a special energy, over and above one’s creative potential, a special audacity or subversiveness, to strike out in a new direction once one is settled. It is a gamble as all creative projects must be, for the new direction may not turn out to be productive at all. Creativity involves not only years of conscious preparation and training but unconscious preparation as well. This incubation period is essential to allow the subconscious assimilation and incorporation of one’s influences and sources, to reorganize and synthesize them into something of one’s own."
Andrei Tarkovsky // "Filmmakers can be divided into two categories: those who strive to imitate the world they live in, to re-create the world that surrounds them...and the directors who create their own worlds. Those who create their own worlds are generally the poets... That is why they have trouble getting their films out. Because the audience is used to a symbolic, nonexistent film world...the result of the audience’s own interests and tastes. The directors I named have all opposed this...that the taste of the audience should be the deciding factor. Not because they want to be obscure, but because they actually want to listen secretly. To give expression to what is deep inside those we call the audience."
Bell Hooks // "Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as means of escape."
Paul Bowles // "I've always wanted to get as far as possible from the place where I was born. Far both geographically and spiritually. To leave it behind... I feel that life is very short and the world is there to see and one should know as much about it as possible. One belongs to the whole world, not just one part of it."
Rachel Carson // "For most of us, knowledge of our world comes largely through sight, yet we look about with such unseeing eyes that we are partially blind. One way to open your eyes to unnoticed beauty is to ask yourself, 'What if I had never seen this before? What if I knew I would never see it again?'"
Martin Luther King Jr. // "It may be true that the law cannot change the heart, but it can restrain the heartless. It may be true that the law can’t make a man love me, but it can restrain him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important... So while the law may not change the hearts of men, it does change the habits of men. And when you change the habits of men, pretty soon the attitudes and the hearts will be changed. And so there is a need for strong legislation constantly to grapple with the problems we face."
Naguib Mahfouz // "Home is not where you were born; home is where all your attempts to escape cease."
Agnes Varda // "I need images, I need representation which deals in other means than reality. We have to use reality but get out of it. That's what I try to do all the time."
Jeff Buckley // "I know there are so many new ideas that haven’t even occurred to me, and it’s going to take more time and maturity for me to channel them. I’ll just let it happen and try not to rush it too much."