You don't remember what happened. What you remember becomes what happened.

— John Green

When you are studying any matter, or considering any philosophy, ask yourself only: What are the facts and what is the truth that the facts bear out?

— Bertrand Russell

To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

It's very easy to be different, but very difficult to be better.

— Jonathan Ive

What the really great artists do is they're entirely themselves. They're entirely themselves, they've got their own vision, they have their own way of fracturing reality, and if it's authentic and true, you will feel it in your nerve endings.

— David Foster Wallace

Art is not escape, but a way of finding order in chaos, a way of confronting life.

— Robert Hayden

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe; while working at Haus Esters, about 1927/28.

Opinion is really the lowest form of human knowledge. It requires no accountability, no understanding. The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound purpose larger than the self kind of understanding.

— Bill Bullard

The only routine with me is no routine at all.

— Jackie Onassis

Robert Barry | Closed Gallery | 1969

But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

— Kurt Vonnegut

Atheism is more than just the knowledge that gods do not exist, and that religion is either a mistake or a fraud. Atheism is an attitude, a frame of mind that looks at the world objectively, fearlessly, always trying to understand all things as a part of nature.

— Carl Sagan

Let us forget with generosity those who cannot love us.

— Pablo Neruda

There is no final one; revolutions are infinite.

— Yevgeny Zamyatin

[...] und ich möchte Sie, so gut ich es kann, bitten, lieber Herr, Geduld zu haben gegen alles Ungelöste in Ihrem Herzen und zu versuchen, die Fragen selbst liebzuhaben wie verschlossene Stuben und wie Bücher, die in einer sehr fremden Sprache geschrieben sind. Forschen Sie jetzt nicht nach den Antworten, die Ihnen nicht gegeben werden können, weil Sie sie nicht leben könnten. Und es handelt sich darum, alles zu leben. Leben Sie jetzt die Fragen. Vielleicht leben Sie dann allmählich, ohne es zu merken, eines fernen Tages in die Antwort hinein.

— Rainer Maria Rilke

Art is either plagiarism or revolution.

— Paul Gauguin

Carl Andre | now now | 1967

Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface.

— Donald Judd

It is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way — not his way.

— Mark Rothko

Istvan Kantor | Gift at MOMA New York | 1988

I don't think it is the function of art to be pleasing. Art is not democratic. It is not for the people.

— Richard Serra

Ordinary life does not interest me.

— Anaïs Nin

sqq. *

Simplicity of form is not necessarily simplicity of experience.

— Robert Morris

Andy, take my picture.

I don't listen to what art critics say. I don't know anybody who needs a critic to find out what art is.

— Jean-Michel Basquiat

Playing chess with Bobby ...