Nina Simone // "I had a technique, and I used it. To cast the spell over an audience I would start with a song to create a certain mood which I carried into the next song and then on through into the third, until I created a certain climax of feeling and by then they would be hypnotized. To check, I'd stop and do nothing for a moment and I'd hear absolute silence: I'd got them. It was always an uncanny moment. It was as if there was a power source somewhere that we all plugged into, and the bigger the audience the easier it was…as if each person supplied a certain amount of power. As I moved on from clubs into bigger halls I learned to prepare myself thoroughly: I'd go to the empty hall in the afternoon and walk around to see where the people were sitting, how close they'd be to me at the front and how far away at the back, whether the seats got closer together or further apart, how big the stage was, how the lights were positioned, where the microphones were going to hit…everything. I was especially careful of microphones, taking the trouble to find one that worked for me… So by the time I got on stage I knew exactly what I was doing."
John Cassavetes // "These days, everybody is supposed to be so intelligent: 'Did you hear about the earthquake in Peru?' And you’re supposed to have all the answers. But when it gets down to the nitty-gritty, like, 'What is bugging you…why can’t you make it with your wife? Why do you lie awake all night staring at the ceiling? Why, why, why do you refuse to recognize you have problems and deal with them?' The answer is that people have forgotten how to relate or respond. In this day of mass communications and instant communications, there is no communication between people. Instead it’s long-winded stories or hostile bits, or laughter. But nobody’s really laughing. It’s more a hysterical, joyless kind of sound. Translation: 'I am here and I don’t know why.'"
Pina Bausch // "I’m searching for...the right images. And I have no words for that. But I know right away when I’ve got it. If I say, it will be like this, it would limit it somehow. I like very much to be completely open, and allow things to happen."
Frédéric Chopin // "It is dreadful when something weighs on your mind, not to have a soul to unburden yourself to. You know what I mean. I tell my piano the things I used to tell you."
Vincent van Gogh // "I want something more concise, more simple, more serious; I want more soul and more love and more heart."
Tupac Shakur // "A lot of people...have a problem being true to themselves. They have a problem looking into the mirror and looking directly into their own souls. The reason I can...walk around, the reason I am who I am today is because I can look directly into my face and find my soul."
Nikos Kazantzakis // "Once, I saw a bee drown in honey, and I understood."
Charles Bukowski // "Style is the answer to everything. A fresh way to approach a dull or dangerous thing. To do a dull thing with style is preferable to doing a dangerous thing without it. To do a dangerous thing with style is what I call art... Boxing can be art. Loving can be art. Opening a can of sardines can be an art... Not many have style. Not many can keep style... Style is the difference, a way of doing, a way of being done."
Björk // "In my most natural state, I'll be introverted for say, six days in a row, and then on the seventh day I'll become very extroverted... Then I'll have to go back inside myself... It's something I can't really control. It's a bit like the ocean and the tides."
Ettore Sottsass // "I like people who are not sure of themselves, the perplexed, the modest, those who try to understand."
Hossein Sabzian // "For me, art is the experience of what you’ve felt inside."
Robert Redford // "I'm interested in that thing that happens where there's a breaking point for some people and not for others. You go through such hardship, things that are almost impossibly difficult, and there's no sign that it's going to get any better, and that's the point when people quit. But some don't."
