OLIVER SACKS. 1933-2015 “Hallucinations” “Gratitude”
THE POWER OF MUSIC to integrate and cure . . . is quite fundamental. It is the profoundest nonchemical medication.
WE SEE WITH THE EYES, but we see with the brain as well. And seeing with the brain is often called imagination.
ABOVE ALL, I have been a sentient being, a thinking animal, on this beautiful planet, and that in itself has been an enormous privilege and adventure.
COURTNEY LOVE 1964 . . .
ROCK IS ALL ABOUT WRITING YOUR OWN SCRIPT; it’s all about pioneering.
REAL GIRLS aren’t perfect, and perfect girls aren’t real.
BEING OFFENDED IS PART OF BEING IN THE REAL WORLD.
IF YOU TREAT A GIRL LIKE A DOG, SHE IS GOING TO PISS ONN YOU.
I WISH I was beautiful or at least wise, but I’m simply mad and violent.
OLIVER SACKS
I HAVE TO LIVE in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.
EVERY ACT OF PERCEPTION, is to some degree an act of creation, and every act of memory is to some degree an act of imagination.
MY RELIGION IS NATURE. That’s what arouses those feelings of wonder and mysticism and gratitude in me.
MUSIC EVOKES EMOTION AND EMOTION CAN BRING IT’S MEMORY.
PEOPLE WILL MAKE A LIFE IN THEIR OWN TERMS, whether they are deaf or colorblind or autistic or whatever. And their world will be quite as rich and interesting as ours.
WE SPEAK NOT ONLY TO TELL OTHER PEOPLE WHAT WE THINK, but to tell ourselves what we think. Speech is a part of thought.
MUCH MORE of the brain is devoted to movement than to language.
Language is only a little thing sitting on top of this huge ocean of movement.
THE PAST which is not recoverable in any other way is embedded, as if in amber, in the music, and people can regain a sense of identity.
MUSIC, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. It has no power to represent anything particular or external, but it has a unique power to express inner states or feelings. Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.
MUSIC HAS A BONDING POWER, IT’S PRIMAL SOCIAL CEMENT.
TO BE OURSELVES we must have ourselves — possess, if need be re-possess, our life-stories. We must “recollect” ourselves, recollect the inner drama, the narrative, of ourselves. A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain, his identity, his self.
CREATIVITY INVOLVES the depth of a mind, and many, many depths of unconsciousness.
CREATIVITY . . . involves te power to originate, to break away from the existing ways of looking at things, to move freely in the realm of the imagination, to create and recreate worlds fully in one’s mind–while supervising all this with a critical inner eye.
I AM A MAN of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms, and extreme immoderation in all my passions.
I cannot pretend I am without fear. But my predominant feeling is one of gratitude. I have loved and been loved; I have been given much and I have given something in return; I have read and traveled and thought and written. I have had an intercourse with the world, the special intercourse of writers and readers.
COURTNEY LOVE. 1964 . . . . . “Kurt & Courtney” “Sid & Nancy’
EVERYTHING THAT BECOMES TRUE STARTS WITH A MANIFESTO.
KURT COBAIN had a lot of German in him. Some Irish. But no jew. I think that if he had had a little jew he would have (expletive) stuck it out.
DOROTHY THOMPSON. 1893-1961 “Dangerous Ambition”
The first American journalist to be expelled from Nazi Germany.
ONLY WHEN WE ARE NO LONGER AFRAID DO WE BEGIN TO LIVE.
THERE IS NOTHING TO FEAR except the persistent refusal to find out the truth.
HATE smolders and eventually destroys, not the hated but the hater.
AGE is not measured by years. Nature does not equally distribute energy. Some people are born old and tired while others are going strong at seventy.
COURAGE, it would seem, is nothing less than the power to overcome danger, misfortune, fear, injustice, while continuing to affirm inwardly that life with all its sorrows is good; that everything is meaningful even if in a sense beyond our understanding; and that there is always tomorrow.
A LITTLE MORE MATRIARCHY is what the world needs, and I know it. Period. Paragraph.
THE MOST DESTRUCTIVE ELEMENT IN THE HUMAN MIND IS FEAR. FEAR CREATES AGGRESSIVENESS; AGGRESSIVENESS ENGENDERS HOSTILITY; HOSTILITY ENGENDERS FEAR, A DISASTROUS CIRCLE.
PASSIVITY AND QUIETISM ARE INVITATIONS TO WAR.
FILL YOUR HEARTS WITH LOVE FOR ONE ANOTHER.