Jacques Brel // "I wish you endless dreams and the furious desire to realize some of them. I wish you to love what must be loved, and to forget what must be forgotten. I wish you passions. I wish you silences. I wish you birdsongs as you wake up and children’s laughter. I wish you to respect the differences of others, because the worth and virtues of each person often remain to be discovered. I wish you to resist the stagnation, the indifference, and the negative values of our time. I wish you at last to never to give up the search, for adventure, life, love. For life is a wonderful adventure and no reasonable person should give it up without a tough fight. I wish you above all to be yourself, proud of being and happy, for happiness is our true destiny."
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."
James Baldwin // "No one can possibly know what is about to happen: it is happening, each time, for the first time, for the only time."
David Hockney // "I think I’m greedy, but I’m not greedy for money. I’m greedy for an exciting life."
Leonard Cohen // "May you be surrounded by friends and family, and if this is not your lot, may the blessings find you in your solitude."
Henry Miller // "To make living itself an art, that is the goal."
Nick Cave // "Although I am not an atheist myself, I have a lot of time for their position, because I do struggle with the notion of God’s existence to a certain extent. Atheists, though, fall decisively on one side of the dividing line, whereas I have moved back and forth across that line over the years... Many atheists are well informed on religion and hold a view on the significance of the nature of the theological struggle, and so I feel closer to them than I do to the spiritually complacent, the religiously dogmatic or those who are simply indifferent to these matters... But in regard to your dilemma…I can’t think of an act more generous than an atheist at prayer, who temporarily puts aside their disbelief in a god in order to bring comfort to a friend. Loosening your position for a moment, and doing something difficult because it has been asked of you by someone you care for, demonstrates a confidence in your beliefs, and shows that they are not so prideful or absolutist that they manifest into a smallness of being. Of course, to some this act will seem intellectually dishonest, a sham and a lie, but to others it will appear as the purest kindness, where heart eclipses mind, a true and complex gesture of what it means to love somebody. We show that in times of need we can do whatever is required of us, with a magnanimous heart, bending to the will of those we love. Understandably, it will be difficult for you to pray, but that is the very reason to do it. What is true friendship if we are not tested at times, if we are not prepared to soften our cherished ideals as an act of fidelity and commitment to those we love. In the end, this act of friendship may be the most eloquent prayer of all."
Robert DeNiro // "There's no right or wrong. There's only good and bad. And 'bad' usually happens when you're trying too hard to do it right. There's a very broad spectrum of things that can inhibit you. The most important thing...is to feel loose enough to create what you want to create, and be free to try anything. To have choices."
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."
George Harrison // "I just have a belief that this is only one little bit...the physical world is one little bit of the universe."
Maurice Sendak // "Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters...I sent him a card and I drew a picture...I wrote, 'Dear Jim: I loved your card.' Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, 'Jim loved your card so much he ate it.' That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it."
Jean Cocteau // "If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed."
