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Ernest Hemingway
When I am working on a book or a story I write every morning as soon after first light as possible. There is no one to disturb you and it is cool or cold and you come to your work and warm as you write. You read what you have written and, as you always stop when you know what is going to happen next, you go on from there. You write until you come to a place where you still have your juice and know what will happen next and you stop and try to live through until the next day when you hit it again. You have started at six in the morning, say, and may go on until noon or be through before that. When you stop you are as empty, and at the same time never empty but filling, as when you have made love to someone you love. Nothing can hurt you, nothing can happen, nothing means anything until the next day when you do it again. It is the wait until the next day that is hard to get through. 1
When the people are talking, I can hardly write it fast enough or keep up with it, but with an almost unbearable high manifold pleasure. I put more inches on than she will take, and then fly her as near as I know to how she should be flown, only flying as crazy as really good pilots fly crazy sometimes. Most of the time flying conservatively but with an awfully fast airplane that makes up for the conservatism. That way, you live longer. I mean your writing lives longer. How do you like it now, gentlemen? 2
Bruce Springsteen
All I do know is as we age, the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier, much heavier. With each passing year, the price of our refusal to do that sorting rises higher and higher.
I had a left-field hit with “Brilliant Disguise”, the song that sits thematically at the record’s centre. Trust is a fragile thing, it requires allowing others to see as much of ourselves as we have the courage to reveal. But “Brilliant Disguise” postulates that when you drop one mask, you find another behind it, until you begin to doubt your own feelings about who you are. The twin issues of love and identity form the core of Tunnel of Love, but “time” is Tunnel’s unofficial subtext; in this life — and there is only one — you make your choices, you take your stand, and you awaken from the youthful spell of immortality and its eternal present, you walk away from the netherland of adolescence, you name the things beyond your work that will give your life its context, meaning, and the clock starts. You walk now not just at your partner’s side, but alongside your own mortal self. You fight to hold onto your newfound blessings, while confronting your nihilism, your destructive desire to leave it all in ruins.
Krzysztof Kieślowski
It comes from a deep-rooted conviction that if there is anything worthwhile doing for the sake of culture, then it is touching on subject matters and situations which link people, and not those that divide people. There are too many things in the world that divide people, such as religion, politics, history, and nationalism. If culture is capable of anything, then it is finding that which unites us all. And there are so many things that unite people. It doesn’t matter who you are or who I am, if your tooth aches or mine; it’s still the same pain. Feelings are what link people together, because the word ‘love’ has the same meaning for everybody. Or ‘fear’, or ‘suffering’. We all fear the same way and the same things. And we all love in the same way. That’s why I tell about these things, because in all other things I immediately find division.
Daniel Crichton-Rouse
A window frames the view outside perfectly. More often that not — because most people don’t have the luxury of building their own homes — you inherit this view. This is a view that has come before you and will probably outlast you. The view may change, but the view also does not change. I love having multiple windows in my living room, but I also love closing all the curtains except for the main one — suddenly that viewed is enhanced.
Nicholas John Turner
I think we’re all waiting for our crane-kick moment that never arrives.
Paris, Texas (1984)
And for the first time, he wished he were far away. Lost in a deep, vast country where nobody knew him. Somewhere without language, or streets. He dreamed about this place without knowing its name. And when he woke up, he was on fire. There were blue flames burning the sheets of his bed. He ran through the flames toward the only two people he loved, but they were gone. His arms were burning, and he threw himself outside and rolled on the wet ground. Then he ran. He never looked back at the fire. He just ran. He ran until the sun came up and he couldn’t run any further. And when the sun went down, he ran again. For five days he ran like this until every sign of man had disappeared.
Adaptation. (2002)
You are what you love, not what loves you.
Baker, J. A. The Peregrine (1967)
The beagles are going home along the small hill lanes, the huntsmen tired, the followers gone, the hare safe in its form. The valley sinks into mist, and the yellow orbital ring of the horizon closes over the glaring cornea of the sun. The eastern ridge blooms purple, then fades to inimical black. The earth exhales into the cold dusk. Frost forms in the hollows shaded from the afterglow. Owls wake and call. The first stars hover and drift down. Like a roosting hawk, I listen to silence and gaze into the dark. (p.86)
Goodman, Lizzy, Meet Me in the Bathroom (2017)
James Murphy: All I wanted was to do good enough work that it was important. I wanted to be important. I didn’t know what that meant, even. There’s something sad about “Oh, I’ll just do my thing.” It’s like, fuck you. It just seems safe. I don’t want it to just be “Are you humble? Okay, we like you.” Would we ever have Lou Reed or David Bowie if that was the rule? How was it okay for a twentysomething Bryan Ferry to be outrageous and be like, “I’m a fucking god,” in 1972, and for us to all say, “Of course! That’s ordained! That’s wonderful.” But how dare anyone stick their neck out now? By the late nineties, that’s the way things were. “I’ll just do my thing.” Fuck you. No. (p.72)
Jaleel Bunton: When Yeah Yeah Yeahs played, it was like a fucking party, man, and when the Strokes played, it was a fucking party. When we played it was, “Me and my girlfriend love your band.” It was a lot of that kind of vibe. Music for cats, music for couples, you know? If I had a nickel for every time some girl came up to me and said, “My husband and I love your band. Do you guys want to go get a coffee after?” It’s like, “What a rock fucking nightmare. Like, really? This is what I get? I’m on the poster and that’s what I get: coffee with you and your fucking husband? Man, give me a break.” (p.547)
Tunde Adebimpe: At some point along the way I started taking every show poster or flyer from where we and our friends played, so now I have a ton of these. A friend recently said, “You should really put those together into a book.” And I said, “Yeah, it should be like a Taschen-style book, really fancy, with all these posters and a little writing, and we should call it We Warmed It Up for You Fuckers.” On the front it should be a close-up of a woman in a pink bathrobe with a shot from the “Maps” video. She would be on her computer holding her cell phone and doing her nails, and watching the laptop on her lap, and it would be like an Edward Hopper painting but there would be a shot from Girls on the laptop. That will be the cover. I think it will happen. Put a little something in the tip jar. (p.583)
Nick Zinner
I mean, like we know it’s a really powerful song, it was sort of like… our rationale behind signing to a major in some areas was like “we might fail, we might win, but at least we’ve got Maps.”
Heinz Riegler on Wonderboom
Imagine you were back sitting in your appartment with your old stereo sound enveloping your every being. You sit there for a few days, soaking up every nuance of Cassandra Dickins’ oeuvre, when slowly a yearning for the wide open road and van life starts to simmer within you, and your mind starts to drift and project… the UE Wonderboom is casually dangling from the rear view mirror, you’re wearing a Hawaiian shirt and cut off jeans, you’re tanned like a bronze statue when somewhere between Adelaide and Whyalla you pull over on the embankment to watch the sun set in fiery orange sky. You think of the orgy you orchestrated back in Adelaide the night before and you fade slowly; the UE Wonderboom gently caressing you off into dreamland, a huge grin on your face as you drift off.
You wake up and you’re in your old apartment, the right speaker on your old stereo is making a strange sound and you realize the cone is torn. You start calling around to get it fixed but nobody wants to fix your old speaker. You decide to give up and buy a UE Wonderboom for it sounded so grand in your dream.