Charles Bukowski // "I have been alone but seldom lonely. I have satisfied my thirst at the well of my self and that wine was good, the best I ever had, and tonight sitting staring into the dark I now finally understand the dark and the light and everything in between. Peace of mind and heart arrives when we accept what is: having been born into this strange life we must accept the wasted gamble of our days and take some satisfaction in the pleasure of leaving it all behind. Cry not for me. Grieve not for me. Read what I’ve written then forget it all. Drink from the well of your self and begin again."
Pina Bausch // "Repetition is not repetition. The same action makes you feel something completely different by the end."
Henry Miller // "The great ones do not set up offices, charge fees, give lectures, or write books. Wisdom is silent, and the most effective propaganda for truth is the force of personal example. The great ones attract disciples, lesser figures whose mission is to preach and to teach. These are gospelers who, unequal to the highest task, spend their lives in converting others. The great ones are indifferent, in the profoundest sense. They don’t ask you to believe: they electrify you by their behavior. They are the awakeners. What you do with your petty life is of no concern to them. What you do with your life is only of concern to you, they seem to say. In short, their only purpose here on earth is to inspire. And what more can one ask of a human being than that?"
Jack Kerouac // "Sometimes I’d get mad because things didn’t work out so well, I’d spoil a flapjack, or slip in the snowfield while getting water, or one time my shovel went sailing down into the gorge, and I’d be so mad I’d want to bite the mountaintops and would come in the shack and kick the cupboard and hurt my toe. But let the mind beware, that though the flesh be bugged, the circumstances of existence are pretty glorious."
John Coltrane // "I never even thought about whether or not they understand what I'm doing...the emotional reaction is all that matters, as long as there's some feeling of communication, it isn't necessary that it be understood."
Ernest Hemingway // "That’s what dries a writer up…not listening. That is where it all comes from. Seeing, listening. You see well enough. But you stop listening… For Christ sake write and don’t worry about what the boys will say nor whether it will be a masterpiece nor what. I write one page of masterpiece to ninety one pages of shit. I try to put the shit in the wastebasket. You feel you have to publish crap to make money to live and let live. All right but if you write enough and as well as you can there will be the same amount of masterpiece material. You can’t think well enough to sit down and write a deliberate masterpiece… Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bitched from the start and you especially have to hurt like hell before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt use it…don’t cheat with it… All you need to do is write truly and not care about what the fate of it is. Go on and write."
Simone Weil // "Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity."
Jane Goodall // "There’s still a lot worth fighting for."
Leonard Cohen // "You’ve got to be serious about what you do. And you’ve got to understand the price you pay for frivolity or just for greed...it’s a very high price, especially if you’re involved in this sacred material, which is about the human heart and human desire and human tragedy. If there isn’t some element of seriousness in the training of the artist or in the atmosphere that surrounds the enterprise, then this shabbiness grows and eventually overwhelms it. I think that’s what we’re in now."
David Bowie // "Never work for other people at what you do. Always remember that the reason that you initially started working was that there was something inside yourself that you felt that if you could manifest it in some way, you would understand more about yourself or how you coexist with the rest of society. I think it's terribly dangerous for an artist to fulfill other people's expectations."
Clarice Lispector // "It's inside myself that I must create someone who will understand."
Tennessee Williams // "It is the pursuit of beauty in things and people that is the journey…the real journey. I was happiest when I sought beauty in words and music and images. I was happiest in movies or in the middle of a symphony…whatever allowed the mind to ponder all that was possible and glorious. The world, I suppose, is the result of actions taken by people possessed of an image or an idea, and the world I care most about is constructed from those images that reminded someone of the beauty and the nobility of people… I'm back on the job of looking for this beauty, and nothing is safe from my eyes and my ears. I want to find and host the beauty of the world."
