Joni Mitchell // "This is what I think about people: They want, they want and they want. However, if I actually gave them what they wanted, then they'd just get sick of it... People get sick of your name. People get sick of your face. It doesn't matter what you do. Recognizing those times, I would go even further out. I figured they're going to get me anyway, so I may as well stretch out."
Leonard Cohen // "Take the word butterfly. To use this word it is not necessary to make the voice weigh less than an ounce or equip it with small dusty wings. It is not necessary to invent a sunny day or a field of daffodils. It is not necessary to be in love, or to be in love with butterflies. The word butterfly is not a real butterfly… Do not make so much of the word. Are you trying to suggest that you love butterflies more perfectly than anyone else, or really understand their nature? The word butterfly is merely data… Do not act out words. Never act out words. Never try to leave the floor when you talk about flying. Never close your eyes and jerk your head to one side when you talk about death… What is the expression which the age demands? The age demands no expression whatever… There is nothing you can show on your face that can match the horror of this time. Do not even try. You will only hold yourself up to the scorn of those who have felt things deeply… Everyone knows you are eating well and are even being paid to stand up there… This should make you very quiet. Speak the words, convey the data, step aside… You have nothing to teach them. You are not more beautiful than they are. You are not wiser… You are among the people. Then be modest… You are students of discipline. Do not act out the words. The words die when you act them out, they wither, and we are left with nothing but your ambition. Speak the words with the exact precision with which you would check out a laundry list. Do not become emotional about the lace blouse… The socks are not there to remind you of strange and distant voyages. It is just your laundry. It is just your clothes… Just wear them… Think of the words as science, not as art. They are a report... Do not work the audience for gasps and sighs. If you are worthy of gasps and sighs it will not be from your appreciation of the event but from theirs. It will be in the statistics and not the trembling of the voice or the cutting of the air with your hands. It will be in the data and the quiet organization of your presence. Avoid the flourish. Do not be afraid to be weak."
Richard Brautigan // "I drank coffee and read old books and waited for the year to end."
Jack Kerouac // "Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent mind."
Patti Smith // "I believe that we, this planet, hasn't seen its golden age. Everybody says it's finished...art's finished, rock and roll is dead...fuck that! This is my chance in the world. I didn't live back there in Mesopotamia. I wasn't there in the Garden of Eden. I wasn't there with Emperor Han. I'm here right now and I want now to be the golden age... If only every generation would realize that the time for greatness is right now when they're alive...the time to flower is now."
T.S. Eliot // "What we know of other people is only our memory of the moments during which we knew them. And they have changed since then. To pretend that they and we are the same is a useful and convenient social convention which must sometimes be broken. We must remember that at every meeting we are meeting a stranger."
Sergei Parajanov // "We were searching for ourselves in each other."
Susan Sontag // "I don’t care about someone being intelligent; any situation between people, when they are really human with each other, produces 'intelligence.'"
Bob Dylan // "It’s nice to be able to put yourself in an environment where you can completely accept all the unconscious stuff that comes to you from your inner workings of your mind. And block yourself off to where you can control it all, take it down… For me, the environment to write the song is extremely important. The environment has to bring something out in me that wants to be brought out. It’s a contemplative, reflective thing… Environment is very important. People need peaceful, invigorating environments. Stimulating environments."
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."