"I merely took the energy it takes to pout and wrote some blues."
Duke Ellington (29 April 1899 - 24 May 1974), American jazz icon, composer, and performer. Read more »
"The moment one gives close attention to any thing, even a blade of grass it becomes a mysterious, awesome, indescribably magnificent world in itself."
Henry Valentine Miller (26 Dec. 1891 - 7 June 1980), American writer (from novel Black Spring, 1936).
"It's hard to use the English language. I'd rather play a tune on a horn, but I've always felt that I didn't want to train myself. Because when you get a train, you've got to have an engine and a caboose. I think it's better to train the caboose. You train yourself, you strain yourself."
Captain Beefheart (born Don Glen Vliet, 15 January 1941), American free-form rock musician and artist.
"The degree to which women hate their bodies is profoundly sad. Let's just put off our self-hatred for 10 years, take over the world, and then we can obsess again."
Eve Ensler (25 May 1953), playwright of The Vagina Monoloques.
"There are painters who transform the sun to a yellow spot, but there are others who with the help of their art and their intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun."
Pablo Picasso (25 Oct. 1881 - 8 April 1973), Spanish painter and sculptor.
"The common eye sees only the outside of things, and judges by that, but the seeing eye pierces through and reads the heart and the soul, finding there capacities which the outside didn't indicate or promise, and which the other kind couldn't detect." Joan of Arc
Mark Twain (30 Nov. 1835 - 21 April 1910), prolific author and beloved American humorist.
"All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt."
Charles M Schulz ( 26 Nov. 1922 - 12 Feb. 2000) - American cartoonist, creator of Peanuts.
"Relying on the government to protect your privacy is like asking a peeping tom to install your window blinds."
John Perry Barlow (3 October 1947 - 7 February 2018) - American poet and essayist, a cattle rancher, and a cyber-libertarian political activist who was associated with both the Democratic and Republican parties. He was also a lyricist for the Grateful Dead via Bob Weir and a founding member of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Freedom of the Press Foundation. He was Fellow Emeritus at Harvard University's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, where he had maintained an affiliation since 1998. The above tune -- "The Music Never Stopped" -- was co-written by Mr. Weir for The Dead and appeared on their album Blues For Allah (1975). He passed away in his sleep at the age of 70. RIP, Mr. Barlow.
"Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly."
Langston Hughes (1 February 1902 - 22 May 1967) American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist from Joplin, Missouri. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form called jazz poetry.
"Cinema is a matter of what's in the frame... ...and what's out."
(17 November 1942) - A critically acclaimed, award-winning NYC-based director.
"I don't like the word ironic. I like the word absurdity, and I don't really understand the word 'irony' too much. The irony comes when you try to verbalize the absurd. When irony happens without words, it's much more exalted."
David Lynch (20 January 1946) - American director, screenwriter, producer, painter, musician, actor, and photographer. Check out his TV series Twin Peaks!
"Scar tissue is stronger than regular tissue. Realize the strength, move on."
Henry Rollins (born Henry Lawrence Garfield, 13 February 1961) - American actor, author, singer/songwriter, and spoken word artist. Former lead singer of the punk rock band Black Flag and the Rollins Band.
"Every good painter paints what he is."
Jackson Pollack (28 Jan. 1912 - 11 Aug. 1956) - Influential American abstract expressionist painter.
"I felt a responsibility to present a viable alternative to the popular electric sound"
Ron Carter (born 4 May 1937) - Legendary American jazz double-bassist who has played on thousands of albums and played with most of the giants in jazz and rock. Read more »