Jeff Buckley // "I have no advice for anybody...except to, you know, be awake enough to see where you are at any given time, and how that is beautiful...even places you hate."
Cher // "Unless you're willing to look a little foolish, forget the possibility of becoming great."
Steve Jobs // "I think most people that are able to make a sustained contribution over time, rather than just a peak, are very internally driven. You have to be. Because in the ebb and tide of people's opinions and of fads, there are going to be times when you are criticized, and criticism is very difficult. And so when you're criticized, you learn to pull back a little and listen to your own drummer. And to some extent that isolates you from the praise, if you eventually get it too. The praise becomes a little less important to you and the criticism becomes a little less important to you...and you become more internally driven."
Jimi Hendrix // "I don't like compliments...they distract me."
Marilyn Monroe // “We are all of us stars, and we deserve to twinkle.”
George Orwell // "Perhaps one did not want to be loved so much as to be understood."
Chris Hadfield // "I would love the opportunity to take everybody on 100 orbits of the world with me. To sit by the window of the Space Station...and just take the time to watch the world. It is immensely, startlingly beautiful. Each time you come around the world, the world has changed – the weather patterns have changed, the seasons have changed...and you develop an increasing understanding and awareness of the world, like watching something grow and flower. And, inevitably, somewhere along the way you start to lose your sense...of 'us' and 'them.' You lose that sense that the little square that you walk around in is the only one that matters. The more people who could see the immensity of it, the beauty of it, the patience of it, the age of it, the toughness of the world and the precious unique beauty of it...the better we would all be."
Pina Bausch // "Your fragility is also your strength."
Jorge Luis Borges // "Of all man’s instruments, the most wondrous...is the book. The other instruments are extensions of his body. The microscope, the telescope, are extensions of his sight; the telephone is the extension of his voice; then we have the plow and the sword, extensions of the arm. But the book is something else altogether: the book is an extension of memory and imagination."
Elsie de Wolfe // "I am going to make everything around me beautiful. That will be my life."
James Baldwin // "Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long cherished or a privilege he has long possessed...that he is set free...for higher dreams, for greater privileges."
Patti Smith // "I tell my kids...think of yourself like a captain, and you've got this little boat. And sometimes the weather's good, and you're just sailing, and sometimes big storms hit, and you know, you're in a stormy sea, but just ride it out, ride it out. Because it's good to be alive."