Wendell Berry // "I dream of a quiet man who explains nothing and defends nothing, but only knows where the rarest wildflowers are blooming, and who goes, and finds that he is smiling not by his own will."
Dolly Parton // "When I wake up, I expect things to be good. If they’re not, then I try to set about trying to make them as good as I can because I know l’m gonna have to live that day anyway. So why not try to make the most of it if you can? Some days, they pan out a little better than others, but you still gotta always just try."
Yayoi Kusama // "The earth is a dot, the sun, the stars are all made up of dots. You and me, we are dots."
Dolly Parton // "It’s easy to get lost…but you can’t do that, you’ve got to focus on who you are, what you want, and what your talents are… You’ve got to come to terms with yourself early on. Be true to you, to know what you can do, and if it’s worth it, to get out there and go for it… And don’t let nobody else tell you that you’re wrong. If you believe what you believe about yourself to be true, that’s all you really have to know to be an anchored, decent human being."
Miles Davis // "Man, sometimes it takes you a long time to sound like yourself."
Jack Kerouac // "I promise I shall never give up, and that I’ll die yelling and laughing, and that until then I’ll rush around this world I insist is holy and pull at everyone’s lapel and make them confess to me and to all."
Henry Miller // "No one creates alone, of and by himself. An artist is an instrument that registers something already existent, something which belongs to the whole world, and which, if he is an artist, he is compelled to give back to the world."
Jean-Luc Godard // "He who jumps into the void owes no explanation to those who stand and watch."
Bjork // "The minute I need to start pleasing five people, I won’t please anyone. But if I only please myself I might please ten people, you see. The more selfish you are, the more generous you are. As contradictory as that sounds."
Bob Dylan // "I had broken myself of the habit of thinking in short song cycles and began reading longer and longer poems to see if I could remember anything I read about in the beginning. I trained my mind to do this, had cast off gloomy habits and learned to settle myself down... I began cramming my brain with all kinds of deep poems. It seemed like I’d been pulling an empty wagon for a long time and now I was beginning to fill it up and would have to pull harder. I felt like I was coming out of the back pasture. I was changing in other ways, too. Things that used to affect me, didn’t affect me anymore. I wasn’t too concerned about people, their motives. I didn’t feel the need to examine every stranger that approached."
Glen Hansard // "If you’re feeling it, then go for it all the way. If you’re not feeling it, then give it what you can. I think the only thing that’s required of you is to be present, and sometimes that means that you might be a bit angry, or it might be a bit intense. And other times, it might be really mellow. Sometimes it’s hard to know what exactly is required of you, so you have to just go with what you’re feeling. And that’s something I’m kind of learning more and more."
bell hooks // "Knowing how to be solitary is central to the art of loving. When we can be alone, we can be with others without using them as means of escape."