"All struggle, all resistance is -- must be -- concrete. And all struggle has a global resonance. If not here, then there. If not now, then soon. Elsewhere as well as here."
— Susan Sontag (At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches)

"The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community."
— Susan Sontag (At the Same Time: Essays and Speeches)

"Without words, without writing and without books there would be no history, there could be no concept of humanity."
— Hermann Hesse

"In eternity there is no time, only an instant long enough for a joke."
— Hermann Hesse (Steppenwolf)

"'One never reaches home,' she said. 'But where paths that have an affinity for each other intersect, the whole world looks like home, for a time.'"
— Hermann Hesse (Demian)

"Words do not express thoughts very well. They always become a little different immediately after they are expressed, a little distorted, a little foolish."
— Hermann Hesse

"The bourgeois prefers comfort to pleasure, convenience to liberty, and a pleasant temperature to the deathly inner consuming fire"
— Hermann Hesse

"Each man's life represents a road toward himself, an attempt at such a road, the intimation of a path. No man has ever been entirely and completely himself."
— Hermann Hesse

"There is no reality except the one contained within us. That is why so many people live such an unreal life. They take the images outside of them for reality and never allow the world within to assert itself."
— Hermann Hesse

"I wanted only to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?"
— Hermann Hesse

"I shall no longer be instructed by the Yoga Veda or the Aharva Veda, or the ascetics, or any other doctrine whatsoever. I shall learn from myself, be a pupil of myself; I shall get to know myself, the mystery of Siddhartha." He looked around as if he were seeing the world for the first time."
— Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

"Every man is more than just himself; he also represents the unique, the very special and always significant and remarkable point at which the world's phenomena intersect, only once in this way, and never again."
— Hermann Hesse

"You are only afraid if you are not in harmony with yourself. People are afraid because they have never owned up to themselves. A whole society composed of men afraid of the unknown within them!"
— Hermann Hesse

"One must find the source within one's own Self, one must possess it. Everything else was seeking -- a detour, an error."
— Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

"You should never be afraid of people... such fear can destroy us completely. You've simply got to get rid of it, if you want to turn into someone decent. You understand that, don't you?"
— Hermann Hesse (Demian)

"'You've never lived what you are thinking, and that isn't good. Only the ideas we actually live are of any value.'"
— Hermann Hesse (Demian)

""It is good," he thought "to taste for yourself everything you need to know. That worldly pleasures and wealth are not good things, I learned even as a child. I knew it for a long time, but only now have I experienced it. And now I know it, I know it not only because I remember hearing it, but with my eyes, with my heart, with my stomach. And it is good for me to know it!""
— Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha)

"We must become so alone, so utterly alone, that we withdraw into our innermost self. It is a way of bitter suffering. But then our solitude is overcome, we are no longer alone, for we find that our innermost self is the spirit, that it is God, the indivisible. And suddenly we find ourselves in the midst of the world, yet undisturbed by its multiplicity, for our innermost soul we know ourselves to be one with all being."
— Hermann Hesse

"A soul that is ruined in the bud will frequently return to the springtime of its beginning and its promise-filled childhood, as though it could discover new hopes there and retie the broken threads of life. The shoots grow rapidly and eagerly, but it is only a sham life that will never be a genuine tree.
"
— Hermann Hesse

"Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them to become what they are capable of being."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"As soon as you trust yourself, you will know how to live."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Every day one should at least hear one little song, read one good poem, see one fine painting and -- if at all possible -- speak a few sensible words."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"The greatest thing in this world is not so much where we stand as in what direction we are moving."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"There is nothing worse than aggressive stupidity."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Life belongs to the living, and he who lives must be prepared for changes"
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"A person hears only what they understand."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"If you would create something,
you must be something."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"What you can do, or dream you can, begin it;
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"It is not doing the thing we like to do, but liking the thing we have to
do, that makes life blessed."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"A word spoken is a terrible thing when it suddenly utters what the heart has long allowed."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life, in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Every situation--nay, every moment--is of infinite worth; for it is the representative of a whole eternity."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"To be pleased with one's limits is a wretched state."
— Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"I think we are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not. Otherwise they turn up unannounced and surprise us, come hammering on the mind's door at 4 a.m. of a bad night and demand to know who deserted them, who betrayed them, who is going to make amends."
— Joan Didion (Slouching Towards Bethlehem: Essays)

"The willingness to accept responsibility for one's own life is the source from which self-respect springs."
— Joan Didion

"That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in face irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every eveasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it."
— Joan Didion

"The future always looks good in the golden land, because no one remembers the past."
— Joan Didion

"To have that sense of one's intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are pecularily in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out - since our self-image is untenable - their false notions of us... "
— Joan Didion

"I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best."
— Marilyn Monroe

"Imperfection is beauty, madness is genius and it's better to be absolutely ridiculous than absolutely boring."
— Marilyn Monroe (Marilyn: Her Life in Her Own Words)

"Hollywood is a place where they'll pay you a thousand dollars for a kiss and fifty cents for your soul. I know, because I turned down the first offer often enough and held out for the fifty cents."
— Marilyn Monroe

"I want to grow old without facelifts. I want to have the courage to be loyal to the face I have made."
— Marilyn Monroe

"I restore myself when I'm alone."
— Marilyn Monroe

"It's all make believe, isn't it?"
— Marilyn Monroe

"It's been agony but I couldn't have done it any other way."
— Quentin Crisp

"Fashion is what you adopt when you don't know who you are."
— Quentin Crisp

"The key is never, never work. Nothing is more aging than work. It's not only the strain of getting up in the morning for work, but it's the resentment that settles on your face"
— Quentin Crisp

"It's better to dance than to march through life."
— Yoko Ono

"I saw that nothing was permanent. You don't want to possess anything that is dear to you because you might lose it"
— Yoko Ono

"We're all water from different rivers,
That's why it's so easy to meet,
We're all water in this vast, vast ocean,
Someday we'll evaporate together."
— Yoko Ono