Lydia > Lydia's Quotes

“To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”
― Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”
― William Gibson, Neuromancer

“When you want to know how things really work, study them when they're coming apart.”
― William Gibson, Zero History

“The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.”
― William Gibson

“We need houses as we need clothes, architecture stimulates fashion. It’s like hunger and thirst — you need them both.”
― Karl Lagerfeld

“The architects who benefit us most maybe those generous enough to lay aside their claims to genius in order to devote themselves to assembling graceful but predominantly unoriginal boxes. Architecture should have the confidence and the kindness to be a little boring.”
― Alain de Botton, The Architecture of Happiness

“Stories can conquer fear, you know. They can make the heart bigger.”
― Ben Okri

“From the age of 6 I had a mania for drawing the shapes of things. When I was 50 I had published a universe of designs. But all I have done before the the age of 70 is not worth bothering with. At 75 I'll have learned something of the pattern of nature, of animals, of plants, of trees, birds, fish and insects. When I am 80 you will see real progress. At 90 I shall have cut my way deeply into the mystery of life itself. At 100, I shall be a marvelous artist. At 110, everything I create; a dot, a line, will jump to life as never before. To all of you who are going to live as long as I do, I promise to keep my word. I am writing this in my old age. I used to call myself Hokusai, but today I sign my self 'The Old Man Mad About Drawing.”
― Hokusai Katsushika

“From around the age of six, I had the habit of sketching from life. I became an artist, and from fifty on began producing works that won some reputation, but nothing I did before the age of seventy was worthy of attention. At seventy-three, I began to grasp the structures of birds and beasts, insects and fish, and of the way plants grow. If I go on trying, I will surely understand them still better by the time I am eighty-six, so that by ninety I will have penetrated to their essential nature. At one hundred, I may well have a positively divine understanding of them, while at one hundred and thirty, forty, or more I will have reached the stage where every dot and every stroke I paint will be alive. May Heaven, that grants long life, give me the chance to prove that this is no lie.”
― Hokusai

“Don't try to rush things: for the cup to run over, it must first be filled.”
― Antonio Machado

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
― Martin Luther King Jr., A Testament of Hope: The Essential Writings and Speeches

“My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style.”
― Maya Angelou

“Success is liking yourself, liking what you do, and liking how you do it.”
― Maya Angelou

“I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”
― Maya Angelou

“Life did not take over the world by combat,
but by networking.”
― Lynn Margulis, Microcosmos: Four Billion Years of Microbial Evolution

“The small things of life were often so much bigger than the great things . . . the trivial pleasure like cooking, one's home, little poems especially sad ones, solitary walks, funny things seen and overheard.”
― Barbara Pym, Less Than Angels

“Ever bike? Now that's something that makes life worth living!...Oh, to just grip your handlebars and lay down to it, and go ripping and tearing through streets and road, over railroad tracks and bridges, threading crowds, avoiding collisions, at twenty miles or more an hour, and wondering all the time when you're going to smash up. Well, now, that's something! And then go home again after three hours of it...and then to think that tomorrow I can do it all over again!”
― Jack London

“Art is not delivered like the morning paper; it has to be stolen from Mount Olympus.”
― Wayne Thiebaud

“I haven't the slightest idea what art is, but to be a painter is something of which you have to prove.”
― Wayne Thiebaud