Influences

Words, People and Places

There are no shortcuts to anywhere worth going.

Beverly Sills

We have enough people who tell us like it is - now we could use a few who tell it like it can be.

Robert Orben

I have accepted fear as part of life - specifically the fear of change…I have gone ahead despite the pounding in the heart that says turn back.

Erica Long

Charles Bukowski

We have nothing to lose but ourselves.

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorised and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.

We walk through rooms of the dead, cities of the dead: Men without eyes. Men without voices. Men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions: men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideas.

Understand me. I'm not like an ordinary world. I have madness, I live in another dimension and I do not have time for things that have no soul.

People empty me. I have to get away to refill.

It's necessary for me sometimes just to be alone and quiet and doing nothing.

Those who escape hell never talk about it and nothing much bothers them after that.

What matters most is how well you walk through the fire.

Find what you love and let it kill you.

Albert Camus

I am filled with a desire for clarity and meaning within a world and condition that offers neither.

Great ideas, it has been said, come into the world as gently as doves. Perhaps then, if we listen attentively, we shall hear, amid the uproar of the empires and the nations, a faint flutter of wings, the gentle stirring of life and hope.

The realisation that life is absurd cannot be an end, but only a beginning.

Man is the only creature who refuses to be what he is.

There is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts.

The only way to deal with an unfree world is to become absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.

MARIAN KEYES

“You could do nothing in Ireland, somebody would catch you. Like I do not know how we manage it, there’s five million of us in Ireland, but it feels like there are only 13 people because anytime you do something wrong, somebody will catch you, somebody will see you like it’s impossible to have secrets in Ireland. I felt like I was choking in this country, this theocracy. I came to London and nobody knew me and nobody had any interest in me and I could be anyone and for a while I was. Everything and everywhere was exciting.”

“I could do the walk of shame anytime I wanted in London, no one turned a blind eye, whereas in Dublin if I had returned home at seven in the morning wearing last night’s clothes, my knickers in my pocket, I was convinced it’d get on the evening news.”

“They (the Catholic Church) pumped shame into the air in Ireland so that you just breathed it in. It felt a bit like that. The Ireland of my childhood and teenage years was a place where you did not stick your head above the parapet. You didn’t draw attention to yourself, you didn’t speak out of turn, you didn’t address anything that you found contentious, but I read against all of that.”

ALBERT EINSTEIN

There comes a time in your life when you need to stop reading other people's books and write your own.

The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift.

The woman who follows the crowd will usually go no further than the crowd. The woman who walks alone is likely to find herself in places no one has been before.

In the middle of every difficulty lies opportunity.

The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all truth and science.

Allen Ginsberg

I have no other possessions of value but my soul.

Brendan Francis Behan

A man is already halfway in love with any woman who listens to him.

I am a drinker with writing problems.

There is no such thing as bad publicity except your own obituary.

I was court-martialled in my absence, and sentenced in my absence, so I said they could shoot me in my absence.

The big difference between sex for money and sex for free is that sex for money costs a lot less.

Many of our fears are tissue paper thin, and a single courageous step would carry us clear through them.

Carl JUNG

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakens.

Knowing your own darkness is the best method for dealing with the darknesses of other people.

Synchronicity is an ever present reality for these who have eyes to see.

Depression is like a woman in black. If she turns up, don’t shoo her away. Invite her in, offer her a seat, treat her like a guest and listen to what she wants to say.

The right way to wholeness is made up of fateful detours and wrong turnings.

When (one) is afraid (of death), when he doesn’t look back, (death) petrifies him. He dies before his time. But when he’s living on, looking forward to the great adventure that is ahead, then he lives.

In each of us there is another whom we do not know.

CREATIVITY

Creative people are curious, flexible, persistent, and independent with a tremendous spirit of adventure and a love of play.

Henri Matisse

You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.

Maya Angelou

Art is the essence of awareness.

Louise Nevelson

There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality.

Picasso

I don’t think about art when I’m working. I try to think about life.

Jean-Michel Basquiat

Creativity is an act of defiance. You’re challenging the status quo. You’re questioning accepted truths and principles. You’re asking three universal questions that mock conventional wisdom: “Why do I have to obey the rules?” “Why can’t I be different?” ”Why can’t I do it my way?”

Twyla Twarp

Art is not a thing, it is a way.

Elbert Hubbard

Painting is dancing with chaos.

Melanie Circle

CURIOSITY

Let's just say I was testing the bounds of reality. I was curious to see what would happen. That's all it was: curiosity.

Jim Morrison

Dr Seuss

Today was good, Today was fun. Tomorrow is another one.

Be who you are, say what you feel because those who mind don’t matter and those who matter don’t mind.

Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple.

Why fit in when you were born to stand out.

Whether you colour the world or light it up blue...you're making a difference, so keep being you.

EMILY Dickinson

The soul should always stand ajar.

I know nothing that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.

Death is a dialogue between…the spirit and the dust.

Not knowing when the dawn will come I open every door.

I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.

EMPATHY

Empathy is about finding echoes of another person in yourself.

Moshin Hamid.

You can be a spiritual, empathetic, gentle, loving human and still tell people to go fuck themselves when necessary.

Brooke Hampton

ERNEST hemingway

Once writing has become your major vice and greatest pleasure only death can stop it.

All you have to write is one sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.

The best people possess a feeling for beauty, the courage to take risks, the discipline to tell the truth, the capacity for sacrifice. Ironically, their virtues make them vulnerable; they are often wounded, sometimes destroyed.

Write hard and clear about what hurts.

Go all the way with it. Do not back off. For once, go all the way with what matters.

FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.

No artist tolerates reality.

Every deep thinker is more afraid of being understood than being misunderstood.

You know a moment is important when it is making your mind go numb with beauty.

They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.

You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star.

Thus I spoke, more and more softly: for I was afraid of my own thoughts, and the thoughts behind my thoughts.

And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.

f. Scott Fitzgerald

He saw her before he saw anything else in the room.

Our lives are defined by opportunities, even the ones we miss.

George Bernard Shaw

Two things define you: Your patience when you have nothing and your attitude when you have everything.

Write your sad times in sand, write your good times in stone.

Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.

You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.

Don't wait for the right opportunity: create it. Those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

The secret to success is to offend the greatest number of people.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to the conversation.

Hunter S. Thompson

Sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whiskey, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested.

Faster, FASTER, UNTIL THE THRILL OF SPEED OVERCOMES THE FEAR OF DEATH.

Life has become immeasurably better since I have been forced to stop taking it seriously.

I HAve a theory that truth is never told during the nine-to-five hours.

We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and...in spite of True Romance magazines...we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely...at least, not all the time...but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness.

J.D. SALINGER

I have so much I want to tell you, and nowhere to begin.

I’m sick of not having the courage to be an absolute nobody.

One day - preferably when we’re both blind drunk - we can talk about it.

She wasn’t doing a thing that I could see, except standing there leaning on a balcony railing, holding the universe together.

I’ll read my books and I’ll drink coffee and I’ll listen to music. And I’ll bolt the door.

There are still a few men who love desperately.

She had immense eyes that always seemed in danger of capsizing in their own innocence.

Jack Kerouac

Because the only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow candles exploding like spiders across the stars.

I have nothing to offer anybody except my own confusion.

I came to the point where I needed solitude and to 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.

I promise I’ll never give up, and that i’ll die yelling and laughing.

Great things are not accomplished by those who yield to trends and fads and popular opinion.

I saw that my life was a vast glowing empty page and I could do anything I wanted.

SO THEREFORE I DEDICATE MYSELF TO MYSELF, TO MY ART, MY SLEEP, MY DREAMS, MY LABOURS, MY SUFFERANCES, MY LONELINESS, MY UNIQUE MADNESS, MY ENDLESS ABSORPTION AND HUNGER BECAUSE I CANNOT DEDICATE MYSELF TO ANY FELLOW BEING.

Jean-Paul Satre

Man is condemned to be free.

To know what life is worth you have to risk it once in a while.

I am illuminated within by a diminishing light.

Do you think that I count the days? There is only one day left, always starting over: it is given to us at dawn and taken away from us at dusk.

Better to die on one’s feet than to live on one’s knees.

There may be more beautiful times, but this one is ours.

YOU ARE - YOUR LIFE, AND NOTHING ELSE.

John Steinbeck

And now that you don’t have to be perfect you can be good.

A good writer always works at the impossible.

Abandon the idea that you are ever going to finish. Lose track of the 400 pages and write just one page for each day, it helps. Then when it gets finished, you are always surprised.

In utter loneliness, a writer tries to explain the inexplicable.

Martin Luther King Junior

We need leaders not in love with money but in love with justice, not in love with publicity, but in love with humanity.

The time is always right to do what is right.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

Be the peace you wish to see in the world.

Noam Chomsky

I was never aware of any other option but to question everything.

The general population doesn’t know what’s happening, and it doesn’t even know that it doesn’t know.

OSCAR WILDE

Whenever people agree with me I always feel I must be wrong.

Only the shallow know themselves.

I love talking about nothing. It is the only thing I know anything about.

Hard work is just the refuge of people who have nothing to do.

She lives the poetry she cannot write.

The public is wonderfully tolerant. It forgives everything except genius.

Pablo Picasso

If I don’t have red, I use blue.

It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child.

I do not seek, I find.

Without great solitude, no serious work is possible.

He can who thinks he can, and he can't who thinks he can't.

Revolution

We have the formal structure of a democracy, but not the substance.

Walter Mosley

To the divine, mischievous spark in you.

Russell Brand