Nina Simone // "I decided that whatever they might think of me I was probably the finest pianist they'd ever hear, so I was going to present myself as such... I put on my best long chiffon gown, fixed my make-up and hair just like I always did and went to work… Each song, which isn't the right way to describe what I was playing, lasted anywhere between thirty and ninety minutes. I just sat down, closed my eyes and drifted away on the music. On my first night, one song I played lasted for three hours without a break. The guys in the bar were used to pianists playing no more than half a dozen tunes in each set and usually repeating the same set over and over. When I played they never heard the same song twice in a night, and when I was really flying they didn't hear the same song once. I used no sheet music because it was all in my head. Between sets I sat on my own at the bar, drinking milk in my long chiffon gown. Nobody said a word to me all night."
John Burroughs // "To find the universal elements enough; to find the air and the water exhilarating; to be refreshed by a morning walk or an evening saunter...to be thrilled by the stars at night; to be elated over a bird's nest or a wildflower in spring…these are some of the rewards of the simple life."
Aldous Huxley // "It's dark because you are trying too hard. Lightly child, lightly... Just lightly let things happen and lightly cope with them...throw away your baggage and go forward. There are quicksands all about you...trying to suck you down into fear and self-pity and despair. That's why you must walk so lightly...on tiptoes and no luggage...completely unencumbered."
John Berger // "Silence, you know, is something that can’t be censored. And there are circumstances in which silence becomes subversive. That’s why they fill it with noise all the while."
Josefina Vicens // "It is only in the body of a person whom we have loved deeply for a long time that we don’t perceive the passing of time, and that growing old with that person is a way of never growing old. Seeing someone from day to day has a slow, compassionate rhythm. The people who live at our side always exist in the most immediate time: yesterday, today, tomorrow; and we can’t see this shrunken distance; we don’t see the effects of the passing years. I realize that my wife has aged only when I see old photographs. And not even then, because they were taken in surroundings so different from the present ones and in such ancient clothing that I look at them as if they weren’t of her… Her aging hands, her eyes surrounded wrinkles, and her grey hair don’t surprise or displease me or make me remember the smoothness of her skin and her black hair of a former time. The changes have occurred so slowly and are so intimately tied to my own that neither she nor I has been able to notice them. I think the great miracle of sharing your life is not perceiving the brutal destruction, the annihilation of the body that you love."
David Bowie // "It’s a compulsive need to wreck everything. You might notice there’s a pattern of stripping down and building back up again throughout my life. I guess that’s how some of us conduct our lives."
James Baldwin // "For nothing is fixed, forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have. The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out."
Helena Bonham Carter // "I think everything in life is art. What you do. How you dress. The way you love someone, and how you talk. Your smile and your personality. What you believe in, and all your dreams. The way you drink your tea. How you decorate your home. Or party. Your grocery list. The food you make. How your writing looks. And the way you feel. Life is art."
Thich Nhat Hanh // "We are here to awaken from our illusion of separateness."
Albert Camus // "There is in me an anarchy and frightful disorder. Creating makes me die a thousand deaths, because it means making order, and my entire being rebels against order. But without it I would die, scattered to the winds."
Georgia O’Keeffe // "It's not enough to be nice in life. You’ve got to have nerve."
Frida Kahlo // "I think that little by little I'll be able to solve my problems and survive."
