David Lynch // "I came from painting. And a painter has none of those worries. A painter paints a painting. No one comes in and says, 'You’ve got to change that blue.' It’s a joke to think that a film is going to mean anything if somebody else fiddles with it. If they give you the right to make the film, they owe you the right to make it the way you think it should be... The filmmaker decides on every single element, every single word, every single sound, every single thing going down that highway through time. Otherwise, it won’t hold together. When there’s even a little hint of pressure coming from someplace else…like deadlines or going over budget…this affects the film. You just want support, support, support…in a perfect world…so that you can really get the thing to be correct. Now, this doesn’t happen these days. So…you dive within and experience the self…pure consciousness…it’s the home of all the laws of nature. You get more in tune with those and…nature starts supporting you. So you have that feeling, even if they’re breathing down your neck, and there’s pressure here and pressure there, it doesn’t matter…inside. I say, 'Every day is like a Saturday morning.' You got a great feeling, and it grows and grows and grows. Then it becomes more like a game. Even when they come by…maybe to tell you for the twentieth time that you’ve gone over budget, you welcome them, and you love them, and you have a coffee with them. And they start relaxing. We’re supposed to all get along and we’re supposed to all have so much fun…just happy, our tails just wagging. It’s supposed to be great living, it’s supposed to be fantastic."
Federico Fellini // "I became burdened…with useless baggage that I now want off my back. I want to uneducate myself of…worthless concepts, so that I may return to a virginal personality…to a rebirth of real intent and of real self. Then I won’t be lost in a collective whole that fits nobody because it’s made to fit everybody. Wherever I go, from the corner of my eye, I see…people moving in groups, like schools of fish… This is one of the things I fear more than anything else. I loathe collectivity. Man’s greatness and nobility consists in standing free of the mass. How he extricates himself from it is his own personal problem and private struggle."
Toni Morrison // "For me, success is not a public thing. It's a private thing. It's when you have fewer and fewer regrets."
André Gide // "One does not discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time."
Charles Bukowski // "And remember this: the page you are looking at now, I once typed the words with care with you in mind under a yellow light with the radio on."
Patti Smith // "No one expected me. Everything awaited me."
Carl Jung // "No matter how isolated you are and how lonely you feel, if you do your work truly and conscientiously, unknown friends will come and seek you."
James Baldwin (& Miles Davis) // "I told him I liked his music very much and he said something like, 'Are you sure?' He kind of smiled. Then he talked with me. Then we sort of knew each other… I could see that there was something in Miles and me which was very much alike... I don’t know what it is, can’t explain it, but I think it has something to do with extreme vulnerability."
Sylvia Plath // "What I fear most, I think, is the death of the imagination. When the sky outside is merely pink, and the rooftops merely black: that photographic mind which paradoxically tells the truth, but the worthless truth, about the world. It is that synthesizing spirit, that 'shaping' force, which prolifically sprouts and makes up its own worlds with more inventiveness than God which I desire... We must be moving, working, making dreams to run toward."
Jack Nicholson // "I'd prefer if people had no impressions of me. As a kid, I had to tell my own family, 'Please, just don't talk about me!' Because they always got it wrong. Always. I just didn't want them to tell anyone anything about me."
Björk // "We go through changes roughly every three years, sometimes seven, where our colour palette changes and how we feel changes…the aroma or the textures…the lightness or darkness around us shifts."
Philip Guston // "It doesn't occur to many viewers that the artist often has difficulty accepting the painting himself. You can't assume that I gloried in it, or celebrated it. I didn't. I'm a night painter, so when I come into the studio the next morning the delirium is over. I know I won't remember detail, but I will remember the feeling of the whole thing. I come into the studio very fearfully, I creep in to see what happened the night before. And the feeling is one of, 'My God, did I do that?' That is about the only measure I have. The kind of shaking, trembling of...'That's me? I did that?'"
