Ridhwan > Ridhwan's Quotes

“Music is liquid architecture; Architecture is frozen music.”
― Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

“A grain of poetry suffices to season a century.
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― Jose Marti, Versos Sencillos: Simple Verses (Recovering the Us Hispanic Literary Heritage) (Pinata Books for Young Adults)

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

“To imagine a language is to imagine a form of life.”
― Ludwig Wittgenstein

“In quoting others, we cite ourselves.”
― Julio Cortázar, Around the Day in Eighty Worlds

“With my eyes turned to the past, I walk backwards into the future.”
― Yohji Yamamoto

“Buy less, choose well & do it yourself!”
― Vivienne Westwood

“My cow is not pretty, but it is pretty to me.”
― David Lynch

“The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity.”
― Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections

“Everybody says sex is obscene. The only true obscenity is war.”
― Henry Miller, Tropic of Cancer

“The original is unfaithful to the translation.”
― Jorge Luis Borges

“If you are bored and disgusted by politics and don't bother to vote, you are in effect voting for the entrenched Establishments of the two major parties, who please rest assured are not dumb, and who are keenly aware that it is in their interests to keep you disgusted and bored and cynical and to give you every possible reason to stay at home doing one-hitters and watching MTV on primary day. By all means stay home if you want, but don't bullshit yourself that you're not voting. In reality, there is no such thing as not voting: you either vote by voting, or you vote by staying home and tacitly doubling the value of some Diehard's vote.”
― David Foster Wallace, Up, Simbal!: 7 Days on the Trail of an Anticandidate

“As an artist you look into yourself to understand the human potential to be all kinds of things that are not necessarily pleasant but are real - a criminal, a murderer, a sadist, a rapist; to be all of these things that many people are. You can't allow yourself to say, 'I'm a different species from those people.' Because you aren't.

The criminal as monster is kind of common. That's very convenient because you can then say, 'Of course I'm not a monster, therefore I'm not a criminal therefore I have no potential in tern of criminality.' And that lets you off the hook. That gives you a nice wall between yourself and them.”
― David Cronenberg

“A novel is purposely a-philosophic, even anti-philosophic, fiercely independent of any system of preconceived ideas, it questions, it marvels, it doesn't judge, nor proclaims truths.”
― Milan Kundera

“Reading a book is like re-writing it for yourself. You bring to a novel, anything you read, all your experience of the world. You bring your history and you read it in your own terms.”
― Angela Carter

“The clock is impotent; mechanical time does not affect those living in an eternal present.”
― Paul Schrader, Transcendental Style in Film: Ozu, Bresson, Dreyer

“The painter paints, the musician makes music, the novelist writes novels. But I believe that we all have some influence, not because of the fact that one is an artist, but because we are citizens. As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved, it's the citizen who changes things. I can't imagine myself outside any kind of social or political involvement.”
― Jose Saramago

“People today have forgotten they're really just a part of nature. Yet, they destroy the nature on which our lives depend. They always think they can make something better. Especially scientists. They may be smart, but most don't understand the heart of nature. They only invent things that, in the end, make people unhappy. Yet they're so proud of their inventions. What's worse, most people are, too. They view them as if they were miracles. They worship them. They don't know it, but they're losing nature. They don't see that they're going to perish. The most important things for human beings are clean air and clean water.”
― Akira Kurosawa, Yume

“Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way.”
― Yasunari Kawabata

“You have to remember that it is impossible to commit a crime while reading a book.”
― John Waters

“Words are loaded pistols.”
― Jean-Paul Sartre

“And, in the dawn, armed with a burning patience, we shall enter the splendid cities.”
― Arthur Rimbaud

“Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It’s not where you take things from - it’s where you take them to."

[MovieMaker Magazine #53 - Winter, January 22, 2004 ]”
― Jim Jarmusch

“I gave up the unequal struggle against what appeared to be in my fate, indeed, I welcomed it with more affection. As one embraces a foe one can't defeat and I felt liberated.”
― Alberto Moravia, The Woman of Rome

“When I am coming back from a trip, the best part isn’t going through the airport or getting home, but the taxi ride in between: you’re still travelling, but not really.”
― Édouard Levé

“There are certain emotions in your body that not even your best friend can sympathize with, but you will find the right film or the right book, and it will understand you.”
― Bjork

“What has always made the state a hell on earth has been precisely that man has tried to make it heaven.”
― Holderlin

“I often wonder if we were all characters in one of God's dreams.”
― Muriel Spark

“Ideas are to objects as constellations are to stars [translated from Trauerspiel, 1928].”
― Walter Benjamin, The Origin of German Tragic Drama

“The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

---Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.”
― Elizabeth Bishop, One Art