"about neither concept nor beauty—instead relying on application, context and frequency to communicate their desire"
"If you are inspired by people who are still alive, you are aiming too low and you're not going to reach very far. You need to reach into the ancient, ancient past to make media to make an impression on the world that will last into the future"
"This is not a hysteria of the painter, but a hysteria of painting. With painting, hysteria becomes art. Or rather, with the painter, hysteria becomes painting. (action lends itself to form)"
"the options for the beginner are many
the options for the expert are few"
“In his dreadful lassitude and objectless rage, Cobain seemed to have give wearied voice to the despondency of the generation that had come after history, whose every move was anticipated, tracked, bought and sold before it had even happened. Cobain knew he was just another piece of spectacle, that nothing runs better on MTV than a protest against MTV; knew that his every move was a cliché scripted in advance, knew that even realising it is a cliché. The impasse that paralysed Cobain in precisely the one that Fredric Jameson described: like postmodern culture in general, Cobain found himself in ‘a world in which stylistic innovation is no longer possible, where all that is left is to imitate dead styles in the imaginary museum’.”
"Music is the space between the notes."
"The child who is not embraced by the village will burn it down to feel its warmth"
"No matter how powerful we may be fighting-wise, a system where all the parts react the same way is a system with a fatal flaw. Like individual, like organization. Overspecialization leads to death"
"Anywhere can be paradise as long as you have the will to live. After all, you are alive, so you will always have the chance to be happy. As long as the Sun, the Moon, and the Earth exist, everything will be all right"
"I have to study politics and war so that my sons can study mathematics, commerce and agriculture, so their sons can study poetry, painting and music."
“This will to life was well understood by Spinoza too. He said the very essence of man is desire - the desire to persist in his existence. That is the essence of what you and I are. You might try and put all kinds of fancy wrapping around it, but when it comes down to it, we may do some unspeakable things if it means that we continue with our existence. This desire for survival is not a passive kind of thing. It says that people are desperate for more experience, they want more of life, they want to visit more places, acquire more stuff, more money, they want more power because all these things enhance their potential in life and that is what most of us are after. Personally, I'm not really after all that, I've been there done it - got the T-shirt as they say, and I found it all boring, dull and unsatisfying. But most people go after that, people who've got a billion dollars want ten billion dollars. People who employ 500 people want to hire 5000 people, just because of the power it gives them. It's endless and you see it in the animal[…]”