QUOTATION MARKS - Robert Bly

'If we've come to a bad end, 

let's make it beautiful'

Robert Bly

QUOTATION MARKS - Brian Clarke - Close To Being Me

 'My role is to get as close to being me
as I possibly can in a picture
and in the work.
so long as I remember the power
of liberating oneself through imagination
and through the subjective
interpretation of the world,
I can go anywhere.'

Brian Clarke
taken from the BBC documentary
An Artist Apart 2011

QUOTATION MARKS - Brian Clarke - On The Art World

'I think most artists today are businessmen
pretending to be inspired.
And they work in such tandem
with art dealers and museums
and collectors that it becomes
an entirely bland and colourless
business mechanism,
designed to fufil a market need
at the expense of innovation
originality and honesty.'

Brian Clarke
taken from the BBC documentary
An Artist Apart 2011

QUOTATION MARKS - Brian Clarke on Absolute Fidelity

'I think that you can't afford to compromise.
if you're making a statement artistically
when you're making that statement
as far as you're concerned its an absolute.
And any variation or dilution
or subtraction from the absolute
makes it less than absolute
and therefore makes it untrue
and, by definition, a lie.
And I am not a perpetrator of visual lies,'

Brian Clarke
taken from the 2011 BBC documentary
An Artist Apart.

QUOTATION MARKS - A Zen Saying

 'When the roots are deep

there is no reason

to fear the wind'

A Traditional Zen Saying

QUOTATION MARKS - The Heartwood of The Holy Life

So this holy life,
does not have gain, honour and renown 

for its benefit,
or the attainment of virtue 

for its benefit,
or the attainment of concentration 

for its benefit,
or knowledge and vision 

for its benefit.

But it is
the unshakeable deliverance of mind
that is the goal of this holy life,
its heartwood,
and its end.

Taken from Ch29 Mahasaropama Sutta, Majjhima Nikaya.
Trans Bhikkhu’s Nanamoli & Bodhi, Pub. Wisdom.

QUOTATION MARKS - Joy by David Whyte

"Joy may be made by hard-won,
practised achievement
as much as by an unlooked for,
passing act of grace
arrived out of nowhere;
joy, to our consternation,
is a measure of our relationship to death
and our living with death; 
joy is the act of giving ourselves away
before we need to or asked to;
joy is practised generosity."

Taken from the book Consolations by David Whyte
Published by Canongate 2014

QUOTATION MARKS - Genius by David Whyte

" Genius is the meeting
between inheritance and horizon,
between what has been told,
what can be told
and what is yet to be told,
between our practical abilities
and our relationship
to the gravitational mystery
that pulls us on.
Our genius is to understand,
and stand beneath the set of stars
present at our birth,
and from that place
to seek the hidden, single star,
over the night horizon,
we did not know we were following. 

Taken from the book Consolations by David Whyte.
Published by Canongate 2015.

QUOTATION MARKS - Friendship by David Whyte

"But no matter the medicinal virtues 
of being a true friend or sustaining a long,
close relationship with another,
the ultimate touchstone of friendship
is not improvement,
neither of the other nor of the self;
the ultimate touchstone of friendship is witness,
the privilege of having been seen by someone
and the equal privilege of being granted
the sight of the essence of another,
to have walked with them
and to have believed in them,
and sometimes
just to have accompanied them
for however brief a span,
on a journey impossible to accomplish alone."

Taken from the book Consolations by David Whyte,
Published by Canongate, 2015 

QUOTATION MARKS - Self As Doppleganger by Naomi Klein

The self as perfected brand, the self as digital avatar, the self as data mine, the self as idealised body, the self as racist and anti-Semitic projection, the child's mirroring of the self, the self as eternal victim. These doubles share one thing in common, all are ways of not seeing. 

Not seeing our ourselves clearly ( because we are so busy performing an idealised version of ourselves) not seeing one another clearly ( because we are so busy projecting what we cannot bear to see about ourselves onto others) and not seeing the world and the connections among us clearly ( because we have partitioned ourselves and blocked our vision)

I think this more than anything else, explains the uncanny feeling of our moment in history - with all its mirroring, synthetic selves, and manufactured realities. At bottom, it comes down to who and what we cannot bear to see - in our past, in our present, and in the future racing towards us.

Extract taken from Ch 15 - Unselfing in Doppleganger 

by Naomi Klein, 

Published by Penguin 2023.

QUOTATION MARKS - John Vervaeke

"We have convinced ourselves 

that because we can now make digital watches 

that we must be cleverer than Plato" 

John Vervaeke 

QUOTATION MARKS - T S Elliot

'They constantly try to escape

from the darkness outside and within

by dreaming of systems so perfect 

that no one will need to be good.

But the man that is 

will shadow the man

that pretends to be.

TS Elliot - Poem - The Rock - 1934

QUOTATION MARKS - Krishnamurti

" One is never afraid of the unknown, 

one is afraid of the known coming to an end."

Krishnamurti

QUOTATION MARKS - Mahatma Gandhi

"Keep your thoughts positive,

because your thoughts become your words.

Keep your words positive,

because your words become your behaviour.

Keep your behaviour positive, 

because your behaviour becomes your habits.

Keep your habits positive,

because your habits become your values.

Keep your values positive,

because your values become your destiny."

MAHATMA GHANDHI

QUOTATION MARKS - David Foster Wallace

" The compelling reason for maybe choosing some sort of God or spiritual-type thing to worship - be it JC or Allah, be it YHWH or Wiccan Mother Goddess, or the Four Noble Truths, or some inviolable set of ethical principles - is that pretty much anything else you worship will eat you alive.

If you worship money and things, if they are where you tap real meaning in life, then you will never have enough, never feel you have enough. It's the truth. Worship your body and beauty and sexual allure and you will always feel ugly. And when time and age start showing, you will die a million deaths before they finally grieve you."

David Foster Wallace

taken from This is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life.

Published - Little, Brown & Co - 2009

QUOTATION MARKS - Kurt Vonnegut

'We're here on Earth to fart around,

and don't let anyone tell you any different.'

Kurt Vonnegut

QUOTATION MARKS - Malcolm Guite

'We have convinced ourselves

that because we can now make 

digital watches that we must be 

wiser than Plato'

Malcolm Guite

QUOTATION MARKS - Whether God Exists Or Not Is Unprovable

 

Follow me closely now: whether God exists or not is unprovable, so for an individual person, whether He exists or not, is always going to be a matter of belief. But at the same time, quite independently, He either exists or He doesn't, irrespective of whether He's believed in. He's a fact, or a non fact, about the nature of the universe.

So if you believe, you're making a bet that God exists whether you believe or not. If you believe, you're not perceiving God as a creature of your belief, called into being by it, ebbing and flowing as it ebbs and flows. You're perceiving a state of the universe. You may be wrong, but if you are wrong, you're not wrong because you're weak and credulous. You're just wrong. 

Likewise, if you're right, you're not right because of anything you did or felt, because there was anything deserving or admirable about your feelings. You just are right. I realise this may come as a shock, but wishing does not in fact cause things to exist. Or to cease to exist. If something does exist, then wishing for that something does not infect it with wishfulness.'

Taken from Unapologetic, by Francis Spufford,
Published by Faber & Faber, 2012.

QUOTATION MARKS - Taking No Notice Of Boundaries To Love

 'As for attitudes towards those seen as being on the dirty outside of the tribe, especially if their difference is frightening in some way, especially if their difference has to do with sexuality: oh my. It is of course an illusion to imagine that the dykes and the queers and the trannies are all safely locked out there in the outer darkness rather than being in here with us, in fact being us, but that's what the corrupting little map of virtue suggests, and quite a lot of those who are conducting my own church's stumbling rearguard action against gay rights seem to feel that they are defending a fortress of traditional behaviour against hordes of drag queens on crack.

The record of the church here is, frankly, rubbish. We are supposed, always to be trying to love what we don't like or understand or want to touch; we are supposed to be taking as little notice of boundaries to love as we believe God does. We are supposed to be looking at each other in guilty brotherhood and sisterhood. We are not supposed to be assigning guilt according to who does what with whom.'

Taken from Unapologetic by Francis Spufford
Published by Faber & Faber 2012

QUOTATION MARKS - The Human Propensity To Fuck Things Up

 

'For what do we do with the knowledge that we've fucked up, that we no longer make sense to ourselves? Turn to face each other, for a start. A community of acknowledged fuck-ups ought at least in theory to be kinder to one another......

So one thing we do instead, when we've fucked up, when we no longer make sense to ourselves, is to turn towards the space where the possibility exists that there might be someone to hear us who is not one of the parties to our endless, million sided, multi-generational suit against each other. To turn towards a space in which there is quite possibly no-one - in which, we think as we find ourselves doing it, that there probably is no one.

And we say;: Hello? Hello? I don't think I can stand this anymore. I don't think I can bear it. Not another night like last night. Not another morning like this morning. Hello? A little help in here, please?'

Taken from Unapologetic, by Francis Spufford,
Published Faber & Faber 2012