NITCH

Miles Davis // "I told them an artist's first responsibility was to himself. I said if he kept getting upset with what other people think he ought to do, he never would get too far, or he sure wouldn't last. I tried to make them see how I had worked all my life to play myself… They said they understood. I hope they did."

David Bowie // "It was a Zen teacher at a temple that I like a lot in Kyoto and he’s not often there…but we were fortunate enough to have lunch with him last time we were there. And it was most peculiar, out of nowhere he suddenly said, 'Religion is over and it lies in the arts.' That the spiritual life will be in the vessel of the visual and musical arts. Which I thought was quite a stunning comment coming from this 70-year-old Zen master… I think people are letting go of the idea of organized religion. I think, I can’t remember what the name of the philosopher was, but in the early part of the century he said that we have to kill God to reinvent him. And I think that is very much playing itself out in the later part of this century. I think we have to find the focus of where our religious strength lies in an entirely different area from the archaic and almost medieval forms that we’re sort of expected to supplant ourselves to… I think we’re finding the materials of a new religion but I think we have to find and develop a new kind of discipline. I think there is no real sense of purpose without a shaping of fragments. I think we have the fragments and the pieces of a new way, but I think we have to construct a path out of those pieces. I think we have the bits of concrete and it’s merely crazy paving at the moment but we have to develop a form. Presumably that’s what we’ll be doing in our new millennium, is developing the form. We have the material."

Virginia Woolf // "Month by month things are losing their hardness; even my body now lets the light through; my spine is soft like wax near the flame of a candle. I dream; I dream."

Thich Nhat Hanh // "This body of mine will disintegrate, but my actions will continue me. In my daily life, I always practice to see my continuation all around me. We don’t need to wait until the total dissolution of this body to continue…we continue in every moment. If you think that I am only this body, then you have not truly seen me. When you look at my friends, you see my continuation. When you see someone walking with mindfulness and compassion, you know he is my continuation. I don’t see why we have to say 'I will die,' because I can already see myself in you, in other people, and in future generations."

Sherwood Anderson // "All men lead their lives behind a wall of misunderstanding they have themselves built and most men die in silence and unnoticed behind the walls. Now and then a man, cut off from his fellows by the peculiarities of his nature, becomes absorbed in doing something that is personal, useful and beautiful. Word of his activities is carried over the walls."

David Lynch // "The world is, sort of, as it is. The way you go through it changes."

Gaspard Ulliel // "I decided to…try to give the others and myself, one last time, the illusion that I am, until its very end, the master of my life." (juste la fin du monde)

Duane Michals // "The best part of us is not what we see, it's what we feel. We are what we feel. We are not what we look at… People believe their eyeballs and they're totally wrong… That's why I consider most photographs extremely boring…another waterfall, another sunset... But that whole arena of one's experience…grief, loneliness…how do you photograph lust? I mean, how do you deal with these things? This is what you are, not what you see."

Carl Jung // "At present we educate people only up to the point where they can earn a living and marry; then education ceases altogether, as though a complete mental outfit has been acquired. The solution of all the remaining complicated problems of life is left to the discretion, and ignorance, of the individual. Innumerable ill-advised and unhappy marriages, innumerable professional disappointments, are due solely to this lack of adult education. Vast numbers of men and women thus spend their entire lives in complete ignorance of the most important things...The adult is educable, and can respond gratefully to the art of individual education..."

Joan Didion // "See enough and write it down, I tell myself. And then some morning, when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I’m going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do… On that bankrupt morning, I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest. Paid passage back to the world out there. It all comes back. Remember what it is to be me."

James Baldwin // "The church was packed, of course, incredibly so. Far in the front, I saw Harry Belafonte sitting next to Coretta King… In the pew directly before me sat Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt…and Sidney Poitier, in the same pew, or nearby… The atmosphere was black, with a tension indescribable…as though something, perhaps the heavens, perhaps the earth, might crack. Everyone sat very still. The actual service sort of washed over me, in waves. It wasn’t that it seemed unreal; it was the most real church service I’ve ever sat through in my life, or ever hope to sit through; but I have a childhood hangover thing about not weeping in public, and I was concentrating on holding myself together. I did not want to weep for Martin, tears seemed futile. But I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep I would not be able to stop. There was more than enough to weep for, if one was to weep…so many of us, cut down, so soon. Medgar, Malcolm, Martin: and their widows, and their children… I had not been aware of the people when I had been pressing past them to get to the church. But, now, as we came out, and I looked up the road, I saw them. They were all along the road, on either side, they were on all the roofs, on either side. Every inch of ground, as far as the eye could see, was black with black people, and they stood in silence. It was the silence that undid me. I started to cry, and I stumbled, and Sammy grabbed my arm… I don’t think that any black person can speak of Malcolm and Martin without wishing that they were here. It is not possible for me to speak of them without a sense of loss and grief and rage; and with the sense, furthermore, of having been forced to undergo an unforgivable indignity, both personal and vast. Our children need them, which is, indeed, the reason that they are not here: and now we, the blacks, must make certain that our children never forget them. For the American republic has always done everything in its power to destroy our children’s heroes, with the clear (and sometimes clearly stated) intention of destroying our children’s hope."

Andrei Tarkovsky // "My films are not a personal expression, but a prayer. When I make a film, it’s like a holy day. As if I were lighting a candle in front of an icon, or placing a bouquet of flowers before it. The spectator always ends up by understanding when you are sincere in what you are telling him. I don’t invent any language to appear simpler, stupider, or smarter. A lack of honesty would destroy the dialogue... When people understood I was speaking a natural language, that I wasn’t pretending, that I didn’t take them for imbeciles, that I only say what I think, then they became interested in what I was doing."