Shooting stars

“There are moments in our lives, there are moments in a day, when we seem to see beyond the usual. Such are the moments of our greatest happiness. Such are the moments of our greatest wisdom. If one could but recall his vision by some sort of sign. It was in this hope that the arts were invented. Sign-posts on the way to what may be. Sign-posts toward greater knowledge.”

- Robert Henri

Inner toolbox

“I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox, full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools – friendships, conscience, honesty – and said, Do the best you can with these, they will have to do. And mostly, against all odds, they’re enough.”

- Annie Lamott

Obama in 2008

"They say we can't talk to our enemies; I say 'Watch me!' "
Barack Obama in Portland, Oregon, March 2008

The place of the artist

"I see little of more importance to the future of our country and our civilization than the full recognition of the place of the artist. If art is to nourish the roots of our culture, society must set the artist free to follow his vision wherever it takes him. Where power corrupts, poetry cleanses."

- John F. Kennedy

Red chairs

“I’m not nearly as afraid of dying as I am of the hinges inside my mind and soul rusting closed. I am desperate to keep them open, because I think that if they close, that’s one’s first death, the loss of hope, curiosity and possibility, the spiritual death. After that, it seems to me, the second one is just a formality. I wanted to oil the hinges, force the doors to stay open."

- Jon Katz

New growth

“The search for contentment is, therefore, not merely a self-preserving and self-benefiting act, but also a generous gift to the world. Clearing out all your misery gets you out of the way. You cease being an obstacle, not only to yourself but to anyone else. Only then are you free to serve and enjoy other people.”

from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Morning shadow

“You cannot draw lines and compartments and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. Yes, in the end it is all a question of balance.”

from A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

Restoration

"The monkey wrench is not a symbol of destruction. Ed Abbey told me right here on this ranch, the monkey wrench is a symbol of restoration. It's symbolic of your own talents. That's how you are going to fix the world - with your own gifts and talents."

- Ken Sleight

Making the images

"The world and this country need artists that have the strength and the singularity of vision to know that the best gift they can give is the commitment to making the images, because images are the magic. An artist should never lose sight of the first obligation – an artist is the only one who can make the art."

- Barbara Dougherty

Impermanence

“The realization of impermanence is paradoxically the only thing we can hold on to, perhaps our only lasting possession.”

Tibetan Lama Sogyal Rinpoche

Flow

“People are most content when experiencing flow, a state of total immersion in a task that is challenging yet closely matched to one’s abilities.”

- Csikzentmihalyi

Travel

The impulse to travel is one of the hopeful symptoms of life.

- Agnes Repplier

Dark nebulae

"In my frigid room I read about dark nebulae - immense clouds composed of the detritus of dying stars. The nebulae are made of molecular hydrogen, high concentrations of gas and dust whose effect in the universe is to produce "visual extinction". Yet the nebulae are detectable because of the obscuration they cause. I looked up at the sky: the dark patches between constellations are not blanks but dense interstellar clouds through which light from distant stars cannot pass. They are known variously as the Snake, the Horsehead, the Coalsack. Darkness is not a blank, a negation, but a rich and dense obstruction, a kind of cosmic chocolate, a forest of stellar events whose presences are only known by their invisibility. "

from This Cold Heaven, Seven Seasons in Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich