Aldous Huxley // "It is man's intelligence that makes him so often behave more stupidly than the beasts... Man is impelled to invent theories to account for what happens in the world. Unfortunately, he is not quite intelligent enough, in most cases, to find correct explanations. So that when he acts on his theories, he behaves very often like a lunatic. Thus, no animal is clever enough, when there is a drought, to imagine that the rain is being withheld by evil spirits, or as punishment for its transgressions. Therefore you never see animals going through the absurd and often horrible fooleries of magic and religion... Only man behaves with such gratuitous folly. It is the price he has to pay for being intelligent but not, as yet, intelligent enough."
Allen Ginsberg // "To gain your own voice, forget about having it heard."
Patti Smith // "Nothing can be truly replicated. Not a love, not a jewel, not a single line."
Nick Cave // "I am sorry I have taken so long to answer this question... I have carried it with me all this time, wanting to answer, but never quite knowing how... Aloneness and loneliness are two very different things... I spend much of my time alone; I always have. I have learnt that being alone, as bereft as it perhaps feels to some, is busy with meaning and disclosure. For me, it is an essential place that intensifies the essence of oneself, in all its rampant need. It is the site of demons and sudden angels and raw truths; a quiet, haunted place and a place of unforeseen understandings. A place of unmasking and unveiling. It can be industrious or melancholic or frightening, sometimes all at the same time, yet within it there is a feeling of a latent promise that holds great power...aloneness holds moments that tremble on the brink of revelation and great change. And then there is loneliness, which is aloneness without choice, an enforced condition that yearns for recognition, to be seen and to be heard... It struck me that your question didn’t have to be answered, but simply acknowledged; that to reach out to you, as you reached out to me, could in itself be the answer and, perhaps, a remedy...to say to you, you are not alone, we are here, and that we, a multitude, are thinking of you."
Charles Bukowski // "Once again I hear somebody who is going to settle down and do their work, painting or writing or whatever, as soon as they get a better light installed, or as soon as they move to a new city, or as soon as they come back from the trip they have been planning, or as soon as... It's simple: they just don't want to do it, or they can't do it, otherwise they'd feel a burning itch from hell they could not ignore and 'soon' would turn quickly into 'now.'
David Lynch // "We think we understand the rules when we become adults but what we really experience is a narrowing of the imagination."
Greta Thunberg // "Our house is on fire."
Björk // "Last year was the year I lost my patience with people who deal with life like it is not precious."
Thelonious Monk // "When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean."
Henry Miller // "We clutter the earth with our inventions, never dreaming that possibly they are unnecessary...or disadvantageous. We devise astounding means of communication, but do we communicate with one another? We move our bodies to and fro at incredible speeds, but do we really leave the spot we started from? Mentally, morally, spiritually, we are fettered. What have we achieved in mowing down mountain ranges, harnessing the energy of mighty rivers, or moving whole populations about like chess pieces, if we ourselves remain the same restless, miserable, frustrated creatures we were before? To call such activity progress is utter delusion. We may succeed in altering the face of the earth until it is unrecognizable even to the Creator, but if we are unaffected wherein lies the meaning?"
Jim Harrison // "Every day I wonder how many things I am dead wrong about."
Heath Ledger // "Honesty always gets my attention. Not particularly someone who is honest to me, but someone who is honest with themselves."
