Maurice Sendak // "Once a little boy sent me a charming card with a little drawing on it. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters...I sent him a card and I drew a picture...I wrote, 'Dear Jim: I loved your card.' Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, 'Jim loved your card so much he ate it.' That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original Maurice Sendak drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it."
Hunter S. Thompson // "The Edge... There is no honest way to explain it because the only people who really know where it is are the ones who have gone over."
Jeff Buckley // "When a person sings, their body, their mouth, their eyes, their words, their voice says all these unspeakable things that you can’t explain but that mean something anyway. It’s a weird thing...at the end of the night I feel strange, because I feel I’ve told everybody all my secrets."
Diana Vreeland // "You’re not supposed to give people what they want, you’re supposed to give them what they don’t know that they want yet."
Béla Tarr // "Who gives a fuck? I’m not prophetic. I was just an ugly, poor filmmaker. I still am. I don’t have power. I don’t have anything...just a fucking camera... As a filmmaker, you have to believe in the people, in their power, because if you do not believe in the people then why do you make film…for what? If you don’t have hope, you do not do a fucking movie. You don’t do a movie for the money, because the money just comes and goes. It’s not about the money. It’s because you are such a big fucking maniac who believes in people; who believes that people will watch and people will be touched...this is our job."
Charles Bukowski // "Those faces you see every day on the streets were not created entirely without hope: be kind to them."
Werner Herzog // "Always take the initiative. There is nothing wrong with spending a night in jail if it means getting the shot you need. Send out all your dogs and one might return with prey. Never wallow in your troubles; despair must be kept private and brief. Learn to live with your mistakes. Expand your knowledge and understanding of music and literature, old and modern. That roll of unexposed celluloid you have in your hand might be the last in existence, so do something impressive with it. There is never an excuse not to finish a film. Carry bolt cutters everywhere. Thwart institutional cowardice. Ask for forgiveness, not permission. Take your fate into your own hands. Learn to read the inner essence of a landscape. Ignite the fire within and explore unknown territory. Walk straight ahead, never detour. Manoeuvre and mislead, but always deliver. Don’t be fearful of rejection. Develop your own voice. Day one is the point of no return. A badge of honor is to fail a film theory class. Chance is the lifeblood of cinema. Guerrilla tactics are best. Take revenge if need be. Get used to the bear behind you."
Bill Murray // "I try to be available for life to happen to me."
Robert Redford // "I'm interested in that thing that happens where there's a breaking point for some people and not for others. You go through such hardship, things that are almost impossibly difficult, and there's no sign that it's going to get any better, and that's the point when people quit. But some don't."
Anais Nin // "I can only connect deeply or not at all."
Albert Camus // "The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion."
Stevie Nicks // "There were times when I was between twenty and twenty-seven...that my dad would say, 'How long are you going to do this? You have no money, you're not happy, you work constantly, you work at restaurants, you clean houses, you get sick very easily...you don't have any friends, why are you doing this?' And I would just say, 'Because it's just what I came here to do.'"