Mary Oliver // "In creative work…creative work of all kinds…those who are the world’s working artists are not trying to help the world go around, but forward. Which is something altogether different from the ordinary. Such work does not refute the ordinary. It is, simply, something else. Its labor requires a different outlook…a different set of priorities. Certainly there is within each of us a self that is neither a child, nor a servant of the hours. It is a third self, occasional in some of us, tyrant in others. This self is out of love with the ordinary; it is out of love with time. It has a hunger for eternity… Intellectual work sometimes, spiritual work certainly, artistic work always…are forces…that must travel beyond the realm of the hour and the restraint of the habit… Its concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness... He who does not crave that roofless place eternity should stay at home. Such a person is perfectly worthy, and useful, and even beautiful, but is not an artist. Such a person had better live with timely ambitions and finished work formed for the sparkle of the moment only… There is a notion that creative people are absentminded, reckless, heedless of social customs and obligations. It is, hopefully, true. For they are in another world altogether. It is a world where the third self is governor... The working, concentrating artist is an adult who refuses interruption from himself, who remains absorbed and energized in and by the work…who is thus responsible to the work… It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be… My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely… My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive... There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time."
Joan Didion // "We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give...we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the necessity of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us... To free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves...there lies the great singular power of self-respect."
Sinead O’Connor // "When I sing, it's the most solitary state… It's not about notes or scales, it's all about emotion."
Albert Camus // "The realization that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning."
Leonard Cohen // "You live your life as if it’s real... The evidence accumulates that you’re not running the show. You still have to make choices as if you were running the show, but you make your choices with the intuitive understanding that it’s unfolding as it must... And if you can relax in that...if you can even touch it, or if it asserts itself from time to time, then the invincible defeat is transcended."
Bob Dylan // "From now on, I want to write from inside me, and to do that I’m going to have to get back to writing like I used to when I was ten…having everything come out naturally. The way I like to write is for it to come out the way I walk or talk. Not that I even walk or talk yet like I’d like to."
Frida Kahlo // "At the end of the day, we can endure much more than we think we can."
Bruce Lee // "If you follow the classical pattern, you are understanding the routine, the tradition...you are not understanding yourself."
Jane Birkin // "I think we can change everything all the time. Accidents are the best things in existence. They force you to leave a route that seemed to be mapped out… It’s often when things aren’t going well that we are forced into doing them differently and they suddenly become interesting."
William S. Burroughs // "What does the money machine eat? It eats youth, spontaneity, life, beauty and above all it eats creativity. It eats quality and shits out quantity. There was a time when the machine ate in moderation…and what it ate was replaced. Now the machine is eating faster…much faster than it can be replaced… The machine is eating it all."
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."
Bob Marley // "My home is in my head."
