You can’t, if you can’t feel it, if it never
Rises from the soul, and sways
The heart of every single hearer,
With deepest power, in simple ways.
You’ll sit forever, gluing things together,
Cooking up a stew from other’s scraps,
Blowing on a miserable fire,
Made from your heap of dying ash.
Let apes and children praise your art,
If their admiration’s to your taste,
But you’ll never speak from heart to heart,
Unless it rises up from your heart’s space. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust: First Part
To be an outlaw you must first have a base in law to reject and get out of, I never had such a base. I never had a place I could call home that meant any more than a key to a house, apartment or hotel room ... Am I alien? Alien from what exactly? Perhaps my home is my dream city, more real than my waking life precisely because it has no relation to waking life. William S Burroughs
Forming grammatically correct sentences is for the normal individual the prerequisite for any submission to social laws. No one is supposed to be ignorant of grammaticality … The unity of language is fundamentally political. Gilles Deleuze, Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia
I’ve come to know that what we want in life is the greatest indication of who we really are. Richard Paul Evans, The Gift p331
Intelligent, thinking people could take things like this in their stride, just as they took the larger absurdities of deadly dull jobs in the city and deadly dull homes in the suburbs. Economic circumstances might force you to live in this environment, but the important thing was to keep from being contaminated. The important thing, always, was to remember who you were. Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
At thirty a man suspects himself a fool;
Knows it at forty, and reforms his plan;
At fifty chides his infamous delay,
Pushes his prudent purpose to resolve;
In all the magnanimity of thought
Resolves; and re-resolves; then dies the same. Edward Young, Night Thoughts, 1742-5
Despite my firm convictions, I have been always a man who tries to face facts, and to accept the reality of life as new experience and new knowledge unfolds it. I have always kept an open mind, which is necessary to the flexibility that must go hand in hand with every form of intelligent search for truth. Malcolm X
One of the greatest journeys in life is overcoming insecurity and learning to truly not give a shit. J A Konrath
The lyf so short, the craft so long to lerne. Geoffrey Chaucer
People say that life is the thing, but I prefer reading. Logan Pearsall Smith
To acquire the habit of reading is to construct for yourself a refuge from almost all the miseries of life. W Somerset Maugham, Books and You
My life is a reading list. John Irving: A Prayer For Owen Meany
Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travellers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters – the saints and the sinners, real or imagined – reading shows you how to be a better human being. Donalyn Miller, The Book Whisperer: Awakening the Inner Ready in Every Child
The one way of tolerating existence is to lose oneself in literature as in a perpetual orgy. Gustave Flaubert
Human life is a sad show, undoubtedly: ugly, heavy and complex. Art has no other end, for people of feeling, than to conjure away the burden and bitterness. Gustave Flaubert
The good die young – because they see it’s no use living if you’ve got to be good. John Barrymore
It’s better to burn out than to fade away. Neil Young
Enjoy life. There’s plenty of time to be dead. Hans Christian Andersen
Far better it is to dare mighty things, to win glorious triumphs, even though checkered by failure, than to take rank with those poor spirits who neither enjoy much nor suffer much, because they live in the gray twilight that knows neither victory nor defeat. Theodore Roosevelt, Strenuous Life
Fear is a manipulative emotion that can trick us into living a boring life. Donald Miller, A Million Miles in a Thousand Years
Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one. Stella Adler
Dear Brother and Sister, I still continue to feel the storm that threatens you weighing on me too. You see, I try to be genuinely cheerful. But my life is also threatened at the very root. And my steps are wavering. Vincent van Gogh
What is true is that I have at times earned my own crust of bread, and at other times a friend has given it to me out of the goodness of his heart. I have lived whatever way I could, for better or for worse, taking things just as they came. Vincent van Gogh, letter to brother
I must continue to follow the path I take now. If I do nothing, if I study nothing, if I cease searching, then, woe is me, I am lost. That is how I look at it – keep going, keep going come what may.
But what is your final goal, you may ask. That goal will become clearer, will emerge slowly but surely, much as the rough draught turns into a sketch, and the sketch into a painting through the serious work done on it, through the elaboration of the original vague idea and through the consolidation of the first fleeting and passing thought. Vincent van Gogh, letter to brother
Life itself, too, is forever turning an infinitely vacant, dispiriting blank side towards man on which nothing appears, any more than it does on a blank canvas. But no matter how vacant and vain, how dead life may appear to be, the man of faith, of energy, of warmth, who knows something, will not be put off so easily. Vincent van Gogh
Depression was a powerful force in Van Gogh’s life and work. Living itself seemed a continuous struggle for him. He’d no money and he often went hungry. When he was twenty-one he fell in love with one of his models – a pregnant and alcoholic prostitute. Great Artists with Tim Marlow: Van Gogh
My life has been nothing but a failure. Claude Monet
Life has no meaning unless one lives it with a will, at least to the limit of one’s will. Virtue, good, evil are nothing but words, unless one takes them apart in order to build something with them; they do not win their true meaning until one knows how to apply them. Paul Gauguin
What’s it all about, Dougal? No, Dougal. I mean Life. Father Ted Christmas Special: A Christmassy Ted, Channel 4 1998
I’m so happy: the sun’s out, and we’re in an optician’s – it doesn’t get any better than this. Father Ted s3e4: The Mainland, Dougal, Channel 4 1998
Chalky, don’t let your life get out of hand. Boardwalk Empire s4e8: The Old Ship of Zion, Nucky, HBO 2013
What are we here for eh if we don’t make our mark ... It’s the buzz. Building a team. Finding the job, planning the job. Carrying it out. It’s the camaraderie. Trusting other men with everything you know. With your life. Great Train Robbery II: A Copper’s Tale ***** Bruce Reynolds, BBC 2013
It’s all a series of distractions till you die. The Sopranos s2e11: House Arrest starring James Gandolfini & Lorriane Bracco & Edie Falco & Michael Imperioli & Dominic Chianese & Steven van Zandt & Tony Sirico & Robert Iler et al, Tony to Dr Melfi, HBO 2000
Something’s fucked up here. The Sopranos s3e11: Pine Barrens ***** Tony to Dr Melfi
Why has everything got to be so hard? ibid.
The circle of the jerk-off life. The Sopranos s6e1: Members Only, Tony to Dr Melfi
It’s like my whole life is a joke. A big fucking joke on me. The Sopranos s6e4: The Fleshy Part of the Thigh, Pauli to Tony
What is it you want out of life? The Sopranos s6e11: Cold Stones, Shrink to Tony