Jack Kerouac // "There was nothing to talk about anymore. The only thing to do was go."
James Baldwin // "Has everyone been in love? Not on the basis of the evidence. If they have, they’ve forgotten it. If everyone had been in love they’d treat their children differently. They’d treat each other differently."
Arundhati Roy // "The system will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling…their ideas, their version of history, their wars…their notion of inevitability. Remember this: We may be many and they be few... Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing."
Miles Davis // "Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself."
Chris Marker // "The photo is the hunt. It’s the instinct of hunting without the desire to kill. It’s the hunt of angels… You track, you aim, you fire, and click! Instead of a dead man, you make him eternal."
Henry Miller // "To make living itself an art, that is the goal."
Hermann Hesse // "For me, trees have always been the most penetrating preachers. I revere them when they live in tribes and families, in forests and groves. And even more I revere them when they stand alone. They are like lonely persons. Not like hermits who have stolen away out of some weakness, but like great, solitary men, like Beethoven and Nietzsche. In their highest boughs the world rustles, their roots rest in infinity; but they do not lose themselves there, they struggle with all the force of their lives for one thing only: to fulfill themselves according to their own laws, to build up their own form... When a tree is cut down and reveals its naked death-wound to the sun, one can read its whole history in the luminous, inscribed disk of its trunk: in the rings of its years, its scars, all the struggle, all the suffering, all the sickness, all the happiness and prosperity stand truly written, the narrow years and the luxurious years, the attacks withstood, the storms endured."
Albert Camus // "No man can say what he is. But sometimes he can say what he is not… Everyone wants the man who is still searching to have already reached his conclusions. A thousand voices are already telling him what he has found, and yet he knows that he hasn't found anything. Should he search on and let them talk? Of course."
André Gide // "The thing I am most aware of is my limits. And this is natural; for I never, or almost never, occupy the middle of my cage; my whole being surges toward the bars."
Jack Kerouac // "Remember above all things, Kid, that to write is not difficult, not painful, that it comes out of you with ease, that you can whip up a little tale in no time, that when you are sincere about it, that when you want to impress a truth, it is not difficult, not painful, but easy, graceful, full of smooth power, as if you were a writing machine with a store of literature that is boundless, enormous, endless, and rich. For it is true; this is so. Do not forget it in your gloomier moments. Make your stuff warm, drive it home...don't mind critics, don't mind the stuffy academic theses of scholars, they don't know what they're taking about, they're way off the track, they're cold; you're warm, you're red hot, you can write all day, you know what you know...you remember that, Kid, and when you feel as if you cannot write, as if it is no use, as if life is no good, read this over and realize that you can do a lot of good in this world by turning out truths like these, by spreading warmth, by trying to preach living for life's sake, not the intellectual way, but the warm way, the way of love, the way which says: Brothers, I greet you with open arms, I accept your frailties, I offer you my frailties, let us gather and run the gamut of rich human existence. Remember, Kid, the ease, the grace, the glory, the greatness of your art; remember it, never forget. Remember passion. Do not forget, do not forsake, do not forget. It is there, the order and the purpose; there is chaos, but not in you, not way down deep in your heart, no chaos, only ease, grace, beauty, love, greatness... Do not forget it, Kid, do not forget it; please, please Kid, do not forget yourself; save that, save that, preserve yourself; turn out those mean little old tales by the dozens, it is easy, it is grace...drive it home, sell truth, for it needs to be sold. Remember, Kid, what I say to you tonight; never forget it, read this over in your gloomier moments and never, never forget...never, never, never forget...please, please, Kid please…"
Francoise Sagan // "I always wanted to ask people: 'Are you in love? What are you reading?'"
James Baldwin (& Nina Simone) // "In order to have a conversation with someone, you must reveal yourself."