NITCH

Photo of Milan Kundera

Milan Kundera // "We all need someone to look at us. We can be divided into four categories according to the kind of look we wish to live under. The first category longs for the look of an infinite number of anonymous eyes, in other words, for the look of the public. The second category is made up of people who have a vital need to be looked at by many known eyes. They are the tireless hosts of cocktail parties and dinners... Then there is the third category, the category of people who need to be constantly before the eyes of the person they love... And finally there is the fourth category, the rarest, the category of people who live in the imaginary eyes of those who are not present. They are the dreamers."

Photo of Bob Marley

Bob Marley // "My home is in my head."

Photo of D.H. Lawrence

D.H. Lawrence // "Perhaps only people who are capable of real togetherness have that look of being alone in the universe. The others have a certain stickiness, they stick to the mass."

Photo of Charles Bukowski

Charles Bukowski // "I was laying in bed one night and I thought, 'I'll just quit. To hell with it.' And another little voice inside me said 'Don't quit. Save that tiny little ember of spark. And never give them that spark because as long as you have that spark, you can start the greatest fire again.'"

Photo of Carl Jung

Carl Jung // "I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy…even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon. Their life has not sufficient content, sufficient meaning. If they are enabled to develop into more spacious personalities, the neurosis generally disappears."

Photo of Henry Miller

Henry Miller // "One's destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things."

Photo of Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix // "I feel guilty when people say I'm the greatest... What's good or bad doesn't matter to me; what does matter is feeling and not feeling. If only people would take more of a true view and think in terms of feelings. Your name doesn't mean a damn, it's your talents and feelings that matter."

Photo of Jeff Buckley

Jeff Buckley // "I know there are so many new ideas that haven’t even occurred to me, and it’s going to take more time and maturity for me to channel them. I’ll just let it happen and try not to rush it too much."

Photo of Virginia Woolf

Virginia Woolf // "The great revelation perhaps never did come. Instead there were little daily miracles, illuminations, matches struck unexpectedly in the dark."

Photo of Kurt Vonnegut

Kurt Vonnegut // "Nobody will stop you from creating. Do it tonight. Do it tomorrow. That is the way to make your soul grow... The kick of creation is the act of creating, not anything that happens afterward. I would tell all of you watching this screen: Before you go to bed, write a four line poem. Make it as good as you can. Don’t show it to anybody. Put it where nobody will find it. And you will discover that you have your reward."

Photo of John Coltrane

John Coltrane // "I never even thought about whether or not they understand what I'm doing...the emotional reaction is all that matters, as long as there's some feeling of communication, it isn't necessary that it be understood."

Photo of Zadie Smith

Zadie Smith // "We want our artists to remain as they were when we first loved them. But our artists want to move. Sometimes the battle becomes so violent that a perversion in the artist can occur: these days, Joni Mitchell thinks of herself more as a painter than a singer. She is so allergic to the expectations of her audience that she would rather be a perfectly nice painter than a singer touched by the sublime. That kind of anxiety about audience is often read as contempt, but Mitchell’s restlessness is only the natural side effect of her artmaking, as it is with Dylan, as it was with Joyce and Picasso. Joni Mitchell doesn’t want to live in my dream, stuck as it is in an eternal 1971…her life has its own time. There is simply not enough time in her life for her to be the Joni of my memory forever. The worst possible thing for an artist is to exist as a feature of somebody else’s epiphany."