Boris Pasternak // "Well, what are you?… What are you conscious of in yourself? Your kidneys? Your liver? Your blood vessels? No. However far back you go in your memory, it is always in some external, active manifestation of yourself that you come across your identity…in the work of your hands, in your family, in other people. And now listen carefully. You in others…this is your soul. This is what you are. This is what your consciousness has breathed and lived on and enjoyed throughout your life…your soul, your immortality, your life in others. And what now? You have always been in others and you will remain in others. And what does it matter to you if later on that is called your memory? This will be you…the you that enters the future and becomes part of it."
René Char // "To suffer from the ache of intuition."
Paul Auster // "People say you have to travel to see the world. Sometimes I think that if you just stay in one place and keep your eyes open, you're going to see just about all that you can handle."
Oscar Wilde // "A work of art is the unique result of a unique temperament. Its beauty comes from the fact that the author is what he is. It has nothing to do with the fact that other people want what they want."
Carl Jung // "I always worked with the conviction that…there are no insoluble problems, and experience has so far justified me…I have often seen individuals who simply outgrew a problem which had destroyed others. This 'outgrowing'…revealed itself on further experience to be the raising of the level of consciousness. Some higher or wider interest arose on the person’s horizon, and through this widening of his view, the insoluble problem lost its urgency. It was not solved logically on its own terms, but faded out in contrast to a new and stronger life-tendency. It was not repressed and made unconscious, but merely appeared in a different light, and so became different itself. What, on a lower level, had led to the wildest conflicts and to emotions full of panic, viewed from the higher level of the personality, now seemed like a storm in the valley seen from a high mountain top. This does not mean that the thunderstorm is robbed of its reality; it means that, instead of being in it, one is now above it."
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."
Hayao Miyazaki // "I'd like more of the world to go back to being wild."
John Coltrane // "There is never any end. There are always new sounds to imagine; new feelings to get at. And always, there is the need to keep purifying these feelings and sounds so that we can really see what we've discovered in its pure state. So that we can see more and more clearly what we are. In that way, we can give to those who listen the essence, the best of what we are. But to do that at each stage, we have to keep on cleaning the mirror."
Anna Kavan // "I had a curious feeling that I was living on several planes simultaneously; the overlapping of these planes was confusing."
Melvin Van Peebles // "I don’t see what I like to see, so I do it."
Leonard Cohen // "One day in the early 60s, I was visiting my mother’s house in Montreal. Her house was beside a park… I wandered back to this park…and there was a young man playing a guitar… He was surrounded by two or three girls and boys who were listening to him. I loved the way he played. There was something about the way he played that captured me… I sat there with the other listeners for a few moments and when there was a silence, an appropriate silence, I asked him if he would give me guitar lessons. He was a young man from Spain… We made an appointment and settled a price. He came to my mother’s house the next day and he said, 'Let me hear you play something.' I tried to play, and he said, 'You don’t know how to play, do you?' He took the guitar, and he produced a sound from that guitar I had never heard. He played a sequence of chords with a tremolo… He put my fingers on the frets. And he said, 'Now, you play.' It was a mess. He said, 'I’ll come back tomorrow.' He came back…he put my hands on the guitar and I began again with those six chords…a six chord progression. Many, many flamenco songs are based on them. I was a little better that day. The third day…improved, somewhat improved. But I knew the chords now…I knew them very, very well. The next day, he didn’t come. He didn’t come. I had the number of his boarding house in Montreal. I phoned to find out why he had missed the appointment, and they told me that he had taken his life. That he committed suicide. I knew nothing about the man. I did not know what part of Spain he came from. I did not know why he came to Montreal. I did not know why he played there...I did not know why he took his life. I was deeply saddened, of course. But now I disclose something that I’ve never spoken in public. It was those six chords that has been the basis of all my songs… So, now you will begin to understand the dimensions of the gratitude I have… Everything that you have found favourable in my songs and my poetry are inspired by this soil. So, I thank you so much for the warm hospitality that you have shown my work because it is really yours, and you have allowed me to affix my signature to the bottom of the page."
Albertine Sarrazin // "I listen to the echo of your footsteps in me."
