Willem de Kooning // "You know the real world...this so-called real world...is something you put up with. Like everybody else. I'm in my element when I am a little bit out of this world."
Jean-Luc Godard // "He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch."
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."
William S. Burroughs // "Your mind will answer most questions if you learn to relax..."
Janis Joplin // "There isn't going to be a turning point...There isn't going to be any next-month-it'll-be-better, next fucking year, next fucking life. You don't have any time to wait for. You just got to look around you and say: So this is it. This is really all there is to it... Everybody just needing such little things and they can't get them. Everybody needing just a little...confidence from somebody else... Everybody, you know, like reaching out tentatively but drawing back...it seems like such a shame. It's so close to being, like, really right and good and open."
Jean-Paul Sartre // "There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours."
Werner Herzog // "Always take the initiative. There is nothing wrong with spending a night in jail if it means getting the shot you need. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey. Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief. Learn to live with your mistakes. Expand your knowledge and understanding of music and literature, old and modern. That roll of unexposed celluloid you have in your hand might be the last in existence, so do something impressive with it. There is never an excuse not to finish a film. Carry bolt cutters everywhere. Thwart institutional cowardice. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. Take your fate into your own hands. Learn to read the inner essence of a landscape. Ignite the fire within and explore unknown territory. Walk straight ahead, never detour. Manoeuvre and mislead, but always deliver. Don’t be fearful of rejection. Develop your own voice. Day one is the point of no return. A badge of honor is to fail a film theory class. Chance is the lifeblood of cinema. Guerrilla tactics are best. Take revenge if need be. Get used to the bear behind you."
Carl Jung // "Whenever we touch nature we get clean. People who have got dirty through too much civilization take a walk in the woods, or a bath in the sea. Entering the unconscious, entering yourself through dreams, is touching nature from the inside and this is the same thing, things are put right again."
Nina Simone // "I have to constantly re-identify myself to myself, reactivate my own standards, my own convictions about what I’m doing and why."
Jack Kerouac // "Everything is ecstasy, inside... Close your eyes, let your hands and nerve-endings drop, stop breathing for 3 seconds, listen to the silence inside...and you will remember."
Rainer Maria Rilke // "The highest form of love is to be the protector of another person’s solitude."
Tennessee Williams // "I prefer work that feels as if blood and bone are being sacrificed; I want to feel the mortification and the giving, the willing giving of life and comfort when I see, read, or hear work. I feel this with…the feral artists who wanted to die doing something that would change things, open things."