Jack Kerouac // "In the general uproar of gifts and unwinding of wrappers it was always a delight for me to step out on the porch or even go out on the street a ways at one o’clock in the morning and listen to the silent hum of heaven diamond stars, watch the red and green windows of homes, consider the trees that seemed frozen in sudden devotion, and think over the events of another year passed."
Leonard Cohen // "May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude."
Bill Murray // "I think if you can take care of yourself, and then maybe try to take care of someone else, that's sort of how you're supposed to live."
Joan Didion // "I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment."
Albert Einstein // "When we survey our lives...we soon observe that almost the whole of our actions and desires are bound up with the existence of other human beings... We eat food that others have grown, wear clothes that others have made, live in houses that others have built. The greater part of our knowledge and beliefs has been communicated to us by other people through...language which others have created. Without language our mental capacities would be poor indeed... The individual, if left alone from birth would remain primitive and beast-like in his thoughts and feelings to a degree that we can hardly conceive. The individual is what he is and has the significance that he has, not so much in virtue of his individuality, but rather as a member of a great human society."
Ed van der Elsken // "Who am I to spout about life, love, happiness? About whether all’s right with the world, or whether it’s just a vale of tears... I think it’s unbelievable, fabulous, this life of ours…everything, the birds and the bees, the deer and the antelope, the spacious skies, the foggy dew, the rockabye babies… My wife’s embrace, a landing on the moon, space, time, eternity. I don’t understand one damn thing about any of it, except that it’s enough to keep me in a constant delirium of delight, surprise, enthusiasm, despair, enough to keep me roaming, stumbling, faltering, cursing, adoring, hating the destruction, the violence in myself and others."
Gil Scott-Heron // "Life inevitably translates into time. That is why the sum total of it is called 'a lifetime'. Freedom is the potential to spend one's time in any fashion one determines. I would always want the time invested in my ideas to be profitable, to give the reader something lasting for their investment in me. It is very important to me that my ideas be understood. It is not as important that I be understood. I believe that this is a matter of respect; your most significant asset is your time and your commitment to invest a portion of it considering my ideas means it is worth a sincere attempt on my part to transmit the essence of the idea. If you are looking, I want to make sure that there is something here for you to find."
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."
Ingmar Bergman // "I am very much aware of my own double self... The well-known one is very under control; everything is planned and very secure. The unknown one can be very unpleasant. I think this side is responsible for all the creative work...he is in touch with the child."
Colin Wilson // "Imagination should be used, not to escape reality but to create it."
Ernest Hemingway // "Sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.'"
Jeff Buckley // "Life has its own rhythm and you cannot impose your own structure upon it, you have to listen to what it tells you... It’s not earth that you move with a tractor...life is not like that. Life is more like earth that you learn about and plant seeds in… It’s something you have to have a relationship with in order to experience...you can’t mold it, you can’t control it."