FINDING INSPIRATION

Jeanette Winterson


"I seem to have run in a great circle, and met myself again on the starting line" (Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit)

"To be ill adjusted to a deranged world is not a breakdown"

Jeanette Winterson appearing in the short film "What Matters?"

Bertolt Brecht

"What is the robbing of a bank compared to the founding of a bank?"

"The theatre-goer in conventional dramatic theater says: Yes, I've felt that way, too. That's the way I am. That's life. That's the way it will always be. The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is no escape for him.  That's great art — Everything is self-evident.  I am made to cry with those who cry, and laugh with those who laugh. But the theatre-goer in the epic theater says: I would never have thought that.  You can't do that.  That's very strange, practically unbelievable.  That has to stop.  The suffering of this or that person grips me because there is an escape for him.  That's great art — nothing is self-evident.  I am made to laugh about those who cry, and cry about those who laugh"

"Food first, morals later"

Lotte Lenya sings The Alabama Song from Brecht's "Threepenny Opera"

Tom Waits

"We are buried beneath the weight of information, which is being confused with knowledge; quantity is being confused with abundance and wealth with happiness. We are monkeys with money and guns"

The Infamous TOM WAITS PRESS CONFERENCE

"In the forest, there was a crooked tree and a straight tree. Every day, the straight tree would say to the crooked tree, "Look at me...I'm tall, and I'm straight, and I'm handsome. Look at you...you're all crooked and bent over. No one wants to look at you." And they grew up in that forest together. And then one day the loggers came, and they saw the crooked tree and the straight tree, and they said, "Just cut the straight trees and leave the rest." So the loggers turned all the straight trees into lumber and toothpicks and paper. And the crooked tree is still there, growing stronger and stranger every day"

TOM WAITS reads CHARLES BUKOWSKI

"The big print giveth and the small print taketh away"

Neil Gaiman

"Everybody has a secret world inside of them. All of the people of the world, I mean everybody. No matter how dull and boring they are on the outside, inside them they've all got unimaginable, magnificent, wonderful, stupid, amazing worlds. Not just one world. Hundreds of them. Thousands maybe" (The Sandman)

Jack Kerouac

"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 roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars and in the middle you see the blue centerlight pop and everybody goes 'Ooohhh!'" (On the Road)

"Happy.  Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red-fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, running—that's the way to live.  All alone and free in the soft sands of the beach by the sigh of the sea out there, that's all"  (The Dharma Bums)

John Cassavetes

"Most people don't know what they want or feel. And for everyone, myself included, it's very difficult to say what you mean when what you mean is painful. The most difficult thing in the world is to reveal yourself, to express what you have to...as an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all, we must dare to fail. You must have the courage to be bad - to be willing to risk everything to really express it all"
"Let's let people laugh at what they want to laugh at.  Why shouldn't they laugh?... Listen. I've had people close to me die, and I giggled.  No one is going to tell me about it.  You can't tell me how I feel.  You can't tell that...Do you know why people don't laugh at people? Because they are too high and mighty to laugh, because if you laugh at somebody, you know you're going to have to be connected with them.  You know that you are going to have to put some time in with them.  You know that you are going to truly like those people.  The truth of the matter is that nobody can afford to laugh at anybody. That's why some fucking psychologist comes along and says, 'Don't laugh at him.' When friends get together they laugh at each other. When enemies get together, no chance baby. No laughter"