QUOTATION MARKS - Emptiness and Stillness by Byung-Chul Han

'Emptiness does not mean that there is a space with nothing in it.

It is an intensity, an intense presence.

It is the spatial appearance of stillness.

Emptiness and stillness are siblings.

Nor does stillness mean that there are no sounds to be heard.

Certain sounds can even emphasize it.

Stillness is an intense form of attentiveness.

Byung-Chul Han - from Non-Things

QUOTATION MARKS - Things by Byung-Chul Han

Things now come into the world almost stillborn.

They are not used but used up.

Things get a soul only through long use.

Only things that are close to the heart are animated.

Byung-Chul Han - from Non-Things.

QUOTATION MARKS - Martin Buber - A Necessary Iconoclasm

'Time after time, the images must be broken, the iconoclasts must have their way. For the iconoclast is the soul in us which rebels against having an image that we can no longer believe in, elevated above our heads as a thing that demands to be worshipped. In longing for a god, we try again and again to set up a greater, a more just image, which is intended to be more glorious than the last and only proves the more unsatisfactory. The commandment,"Though shalt not make unto thee an image," doesn't, of course, refer merely to sculptured or painted images, but to our fantasy, to all the power of our imagination as well. But we are forced time and again to make images, and forced to destroy them when we realise that we have not succeeded. The images topple, but the voice speaks in the guise of everything that happens, in the guise of all world events; it speaks to all generations, makes demands upon us, and summons us to accept responsibility.......It is of the utmost importance not to lose one's openess. But to be open means not to shut out the voice - call it what you will. It doesn't matter what you call it. All that matters is that you hear it.'

Martin Buber - taken from The Way of Response, Ed. N N,Glazer, Published by Schocken Books 1971.

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