Thelonious Monk // "The only cats worth anything are the cats that take chances."
Andrei Tarkovsky // "Weakness is a great thing...strength is nothing. When a man is just born, he is weak and flexible. When he dies, he is hard and insensitive. When a tree is growing, it's tender and pliant. But when it's dry and hard, it dies. Hardness and strength are death's companions. Pliancy and weakness are expressions of the freshness of being...what has hardened will never win."
David Bowie // "I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we've made of them... The fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey."
Werner Herzog // "I'm trying to find these rare moments where you feel completely illuminated. Facts never illuminate you. The phone directory of Manhattan doesn't illuminate you, although it has factually correct entries, millions of them. But these rare moments of illumination that you find when you read a great poem, you instantly know. You instantly feel this spark of illumination. You are almost stepping outside of yourself and you see something sublime."
Jean-Paul Belmondo // "I’d show up around 9 or 10 am and have a coffee with Jean at the corner cafe while Godard wrote our dialogue. When he was ready, he’d get us and we’d go upstairs. First he’d read the scene to us, then we’d discuss anything we didn’t feel comfortable with…we’d rephrase it in our own words. Then we’d start shooting. There were no lights or cables so we could move freely. If we wanted to play around, we did. If we wanted to get under the covers, we could. The cameraman was ready for anything… When I accepted the role he gave me three little pages where he’d written, 'He leaves Marseilles. He steals a car. He wants to sleep with the girl again. She doesn’t. In the end, he either dies or leaves…to be decided.' And we opted for his death. So every morning I learned about Poiccard’s further adventures. I had no idea what would happen to me that day. I’d find out each morning."
Philippe Petit // "I found out that total creativity involves a certain intellectual rebellion...not to become a criminal, but...you have to do things that are a little bit forbidden. You have to feel free."
David Lynch // "Inside, we are ageless...and when we talk to ourselves, it's the same age of the person we were talking to when we were little. It's the body that is changing around that ageless center."
Carl Jung // "Art is a kind of innate drive that seizes a human being and makes him its instrument. The artist is not a person endowed with free will who seeks his own ends, but one who allows art to realize its purpose through him. As a human being he may have moods and a will and personal aims, but as an artist he is 'man' in a higher sense...he is 'collective man,' one who carries and shapes the unconscious, psychic forms of mankind… In his capacity as an artist...he is objective and impersonal...even inhuman...for as an artist he is his work, and not a human being… On one side he is a human being with a personal life, while in the other side he is an impersonal, creative process… The secret of artistic creation and of the effectiveness of art is to be found in a return to the state of 'participation mystique'...to that level of experience at which it is man who lives, and not the individual, at which the weal or woe of the single human being does not count, but only human existence. This is why every great work of art is objective and impersonal, but none the less profoundly moves us each and all. And this is also why the personal life of the poet cannot be held essential to his art...but at most a help or hindrance to his creative task."
Agnes Varda // "If we opened people up, we’d find landscapes."
Peter Tosh // "Everyone's trying to reach the top. Tell me how far is it from the bottom."
Ruth Asawa // "When you put a seed in the ground, it doesn't stop growing after eight hours. It keeps going every minute that it's in the earth. We, too, need to keep growing every moment of every day that we are on this earth."
Charles Bukowski // "I have been alone but seldom lonely. I have satisfied my thirst at the well of my self and that wine was good, the best I ever had, and tonight sitting staring into the dark I now finally understand the dark and the light and everything in between. Peace of mind and heart arrives when we accept what is: having been born into this strange life we must accept the wasted gamble of our days and take some satisfaction in the pleasure of leaving it all behind. Cry not for me. Grieve not for me. Read what I’ve written then forget it all. Drink from the well of your self and begin again."