Ginger Magnum

Archaeologists have not yet discovered any stage of human existence without art. Even in the half-light before the dawn of humanity we received this gift from Hands we did not manage to discern. Nor have we managed to ask: Why was this gift given to us and what are we to do with it? And all those prophets who are predicting that art is disintegrating, that it has used up all its forms, that it is dying, are mistaken. We are the ones who shall die. And art will remain. The question is whether before we perish we shall understand all its aspects and all its ends. — Alexander Solzhenitsyn,  Beauty Will Save the World

Recently, when I got out of the elevator at my usual hour, it occurred to me that my life, whose days more and more repeat themselves down to the smallest detail, resembles that punishment in which each pupil must according to his offense write down the same meaningless (in repetition, at least) sentence ten times, a hundred times or even oftener; except that in my case the punishment is given me with only this limitation: “as many times as you can stand it. —  Franz Kafka, 

"Out beyond ideas of wrondoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I'll meet you there." Jalāl ad-Dīn Muhammad Rūmī-  13th-century  Persian  poet, jurist, theologian, and  Sufi  mystic

"Get scared. It will do you good. Smoke a bit, stare blankly at some ceilings, beat your head against some walls, refuse to see some people, paint and write. Get scared some more. Allow your little mind to do nothing but  function.  Stay inside, go out - I don’t care what you’ll do; but stay scared as hell. You will never be able to experience everything. So, please, do poetical justice to your soul and simply experience yourself." -  Albert Camus , from  Notebooks, 1951-1959

I CAME TO A POINT WHERE I NEEDED SOLITUDE AND JUST STOP THE MACHINE OF ‘THINKING’ AND ‘ENJOYING’ WHAT THEY CALL ‘LIVING’, I JUST WANTED TO LIE IN THE GRASS AND LOOK AT THE CLOUDS. JACK KEROUAC 

WHENEVER TWO PEOPLE MEET, THERE ARE REALLY SIX PEOPLE PRESENT. THERE IS EACH MAN AS HE SEES HIMSELF, EACH MAN AS THE OTHER PERSON SEES HIM, AND EACH MAN AS HE REALLY IS.” -WILLIAM JAMES

"Did you see that Disney film in elementary school -The Living Desert? "Yes," I answered. ... Our world's exactly the same. Rainfalls and the flowers bloom. No rain, they wither up. Bugs are eaten by lizards, lizards are eaten by birds. But in the end, every one of them dies. They die and dry up. One generation dies, and the next one takes over. That's how it goes. Lots of different ways to live. And lots of different ways to die. But in the end that doesn't make a bit of difference.   All that remains is a desert." HARUKI MURAKAMI - South of the Border, West of the Sun