Pablo Neruda // "In the end, everyone is aware of this: nobody keeps any of what he has, and life is only a borrowing of bones."
Sylvia Plath // "Remember, remember, this is now, and now, and now. Live it, feel it, cling to it. I want to become acutely aware of all I’ve taken for granted."
Joan Didion // "See enough and write it down, I tell myself. And then some morning, when the world seems drained of wonder, some day when I’m going through the motions of doing what I am supposed to do… On that bankrupt morning, I will simply open my notebook and there it will all be, a forgotten account with accumulated interest. Paid passage back to the world out there. It all comes back. Remember what it is to be me."
Henry Miller // "To make living itself an art, that is the goal."
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."
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."
Martha Gellhorn (& Ernest Hemingway) // "I see perfection as a complete aliveness; being alert and eager, wanting all things to mean growth and intensity."
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."
Sylvia Plath // "I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery…air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, 'This is what it is to be happy.'"
Anais Nin // "I have a kind of courage you do not understand. I am far from blind, far from indifferent, but I will not indulge in impotent, passive despair. I will not add to the despair of the world. I am working on counterpoisons… I create a space in which people can breathe, restore their faith and strength to live."
Jack Kerouac // "Don’t use the phone. People are never ready to answer it. Use poetry."
Albert Camus // "Our world without love is a dead world and there inevitably comes a time when, wary of prisons, work and duty…all one longs for is the face of another, for the warmth and wonder of a loving heart."