NITCH

Photo of Ringo Starr

Ringo Starr // "I'd like to end up sort of...unforgettable."

Photo of Diana Vreeland

Diana Vreeland // "The only real elegance is in the mind; if you've got that, the rest really comes from it."

Photo of Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso // "Without great solitude, no serious work is possible."

Photo of Greta Gerwig

Greta Gerwig // "Sitting and waiting is such an awful way to live... Creating projects is really what’s happening these days. The chance to participate in your own career is a lot more exciting than just hoping that it all works out."

Photo of Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith // "To my mind, a true 'Creative' should not simply seek to satisfy a pre-existing demand but instead transform our notion of what it is we want... A genuinely creative piece of work always declines to see the world as others see it, or as it is commonly described... Sometimes this forced change of perspective provokes delight, and a Creative should count herself extremely lucky if that turns out to be the case. But she should also prepare herself for the more usual reactions: discomfort, distaste, confusion, shock — even anger. The genuinely new rarely slips easily into the world-as-it-is. It causes at least a little friction."

Photo of David Bowie

David Bowie // "I'm not sure whether it is me changing my mind, or whether I lie a lot. It's somewhere between the two. I don't exactly lie... People are always throwing things at me that I've said and I say that I didn't mean anything. You can't stand still on one point for your entire life."

Photo of Haruki Murakami

Haruki Murakami // "This is one more piece of advice I have for you: don't get impatient. Even if things are so tangled up you can't do anything, don't get desperate or blow a fuse and start yanking on one particular thread before it's ready to come undone. You have to realize it's going to be a long process and that you'll work on things slowly, one at a time."

Photo of Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir // "The point is not for women simply to take power out of men’s hands, since that wouldn’t change anything about the world. It’s a question precisely of destroying that notion of power."

Photo of Steven Spielberg

Steven Spielberg // "The thing I really want to emphasize is...when you have a dream, it doesn't often come at you screaming in your face, 'This is who you are, this is what you must be for the rest of your life.' Sometimes a dream almost whispers...your instincts, your human personal intuition...always whispers; it never shouts... So you have to, every day of your lives, be ready to hear what whispers in your ear."

Photo of Isabel Marant

Isabel Marant // "When you look at iconic people, most of the time they are dressed up exactly the same way for all their life. They dress for themselves."

Photo of John Steinbeck

John Steinbeck // "After the bare requisites to living and reproducing, man wants most to leave some record of himself, a proof, perhaps, that he has really existed. He leaves his proof on wood, on stone or on the lives of other people. This deep desire exists in everyone, from the boy who writes dirty words in a public toilet to the Buddha who etches his image in the mind. Life is so unreal. I think that we seriously doubt that we exist and go about trying to prove that we do."

Photo of F. Scott Fitzgerald

F. Scott Fitzgerald // "For what it's worth...it's never too late, or in my case too early, to be whoever you want to be. There's no time limit. Start whenever you want. You can change or stay the same. There are no rules... We can make the best or the worst of it. I hope you make the best of it. I hope you see things that startle you. I hope you feel things you've never felt before. I hope you meet people who have a different point of view. I hope you live a life you're proud of, and if you're not, I hope you have the courage to start over again."