Claude Monet // "Every day I discover more and more beautiful things. It’s enough to drive one mad. I have such a desire to do everything, my head is bursting with it."
David Wojnarowicz // "When I write...I rarely do second drafts. I’ll do a second draft just to clean up typos and maybe a little shift in the structure, but I’ve always been attracted to the way that people who don’t know how to draw, draw. Their energy is so direct between the pencil and the paper and it’s not cluttered with bullshit style. I feel the more drafts you put writing through, the more you repainted the same painting, all the blood was taken out. It no longer had life in it. Anyway, I wrote this thing really fast."
Hunter S. Thompson // "Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on... So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything... The answer, then, must not deal with goals at all... We do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES. But don’t misunderstand me. I don’t mean that we can’t BE firemen, bankers, or doctors...but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal... Beware of looking for goals: look for a way of life. Decide how you want to live and then see what you can do to make a living WITHIN that way of life."
Fernando Pessoa // "I hear the wind blow, and I feel that it was worth being born just to hear the wind blow."
Simone Weil // "We do not become detached, we change our attachment. We must attach ourselves to the all. We have to feel the universe through each sensation."
Ernest Hemingway // "When people talk, listen completely. Don't be thinking what you're going to say. Most people never listen. Nor do they observe. You should be able to go into a room and when you come out, know everything that you saw there and not only that. If that room gave you any feeling you should know exactly what it was that gave you that feeling. Try that for practice."
Henry Miller // "Show me a man who over-elaborates and I will show you a great man… What is called their 'over-elaboration' is my meat: it is the sign of struggle, it is struggle itself with all the fibers clinging to it, the very aura and ambiance of the discordant spirit. And when you show me a man who expresses himself perfectly I will not say that he is not great, but I will say that I am unattracted… When I reflect that the task which the artist implicitly sets himself is to overthrow existing values, to make of the chaos about him an order which is his own, to sow strife and ferment so that by the emotional release those who are dead may be restored to life, then it is that I run with joy to the great and imperfect ones, their confusion nourishes me, their stuttering is like divine music to my ears."
Maya Angelou // "When I’m writing, I am trying to find out who I am, who we are, what we’re capable of, how we feel, how we lose and stand up, and go on from darkness into darkness. I’m trying for that. But I’m also trying for the language. I’m trying to see how it can really sound. I really love language. I love it for what it does for us, how it allows us to explain the pain and the glory, the nuances and the delicacies of our existence."
Martin Luther King Jr. // "Power, properly understood, is the ability to achieve purpose. It is the strength required to bring about social, political, or economic changes. In this sense power is not only desirable but necessary in order to implement the demands of love and justice. One of the greatest problems of history is that the concepts of love and power are usually contrasted as polar opposites. Love is identified with a resignation of power and power with a denial of love. What is needed is a realization that power without love is reckless and abusive and that love without power is sentimental and anemic. Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice. Justice at its best is love correcting everything that stands against love."
David Bowie // "I suspect that dreams are an integral part of existence, with far more use for us than we've made of them... The fine line between the dream state and reality is at times, for me, quite grey."
Hermann Hesse // "Accustom yourself every morning to look for a moment at the sky and suddenly you will be aware of the air around you, the scent of morning freshness that is bestowed on you between sleep and labor. You will find every day that the gable of every house has its own particular look, its own special lighting. Pay it some heed…you will have for the rest of the day a remnant of satisfaction and a touch of coexistence with nature. Gradually and without effort the eye trains itself to transmit many small delights."
Nina Simone // "I had spent many years pursuing excellence...now it was dedicated to freedom, and that was far more important."