Jean-Michel Basquiat // "Most young kings get their heads cut off."
Lucian Freud // "A moment of complete happiness never occurs in the creation of a work of art. The promise of it is felt in the act of creation, but disappears towards the completion of the work. For it is then that the painter realizes that it is only a picture he is painting. Until then, he had almost dared to hope that the picture might spring to life...It is this great insufficiency that drives him on. Thus the process of creation becomes necessary to the painter, perhaps more than...the picture."
Michel Houellebecq // "Those who love life do not read. Nor do they go to the movies, actually. No matter what might be said, access to the artistic universe is more or less entirely the preserve of those who are a little fed up with the world."
Cher // "All of us invent ourselves. Some of us just have more imagination than others."
Zygmunt Bauman // “As you rightly point out, refugees end up all too often cast in the role of a threat to the human rights of established native populations, instead of being defined and treated as a vulnerable part of humanity in search of the restoration of those same rights of which they have been violently robbed. There is currently a pronounced tendency, among the settled populations as well as the politicians they elect...to transfer the 'issue of refugees' from the area of universal human rights into that of internal security. Being tough on foreigners in the name of safety from potential terrorists is evidently generating more political currency than appealing for compassion for people in distress... As recently as a few weeks ago, those newcomers may have felt just as safe at home as we do right now. But now, they look at us, deprived of their homes, possessions, security, often their 'inalienable' human rights... No wonder the successive tides of fresh immigrants are resented... They are embodiments of the collapse of order...they reveal insecurities to us... By stopping them on the other side of our properly fortified borders, it is implied that we’ll manage to stop those global forces that brought them to our doors... Such discursive acrobatics leave the causes of these crises unexamined, and those responsible untouched by guilt. In a culture that ennobled the pursuit of self-betterment and happiness...it is nothing less than utter hypocrisy to condemn those who try to follow this precept but are prevented from doing so by lack of means or proper papers.”
Bob Dylan // “Destiny is a feeling you have that you know something about yourself nobody else does. The picture you have in your own mind of what you’re about will come true.”
Sebastião Salgado // "It’s more important for a photographer to have very good shoes, than to have a very good camera."
Zadie Smith // "Not everyone wants this conventional little life you're rowing your boat toward. I like my river of fire...I'm not afraid."
Michel Foucault // "What strikes me is the fact that in our society, art has become something which is related only to objects and not to individuals, or to life. That art is something which is specialized or which is done by experts who are artists. But couldn't everyone's life become a work of art? Why should the lamp or the house be an art object, but not our life?"
Albert Camus // “But above all, in order to be, never try to seem.”
Henry Miller // "I believe that today more than ever a book should be sought after even if it has only one great page in it. We must search for fragments, splinters, toenails, anything that has ore in it, anything that is capable of resuscitating the body and the soul."
Chris Rock // "I used to have horrible cars, because I never had money, so I'd always end up broken down on the highway. When I stood there trying to flag someone down, nobody stopped. But when I pushed my own car, other drivers would get out and push with me. If you want help, help yourself—people like to see that."