Every Western ideology promises some ultimate goal — a happy, a just, or a peaceful society. I don't believe in that. We are things in flux. It may be that the stone always slides away from us and must be rolled back up again, but it's something we must do; the stone belongs to us.
Gunter Grass in the Paris Review's Art of Fiction No. 124
One should not fear the rebel.  One should not be afraid of becoming a rebel himself.  To do something new has always been called rebellion...What is to be feared is the death of the spirit.  To believe only what one is taught to believe, to say only what one is taught to say, to do only what one is asked to do, to find security in life by existing formally like a doll poured from a model, to lose completely the idea of self confidence in ones independence and the belief in self-improvement - this is death of the spirit.  To live is to rebel.
- Tokutomi Roka, 1911, Japan
I smile to keep from howling, I sing so I won't pray or curse.
- Roberto Bolaño, The Savage Detectives
I think good narrative comes from observing the world and what happens inside yourself. The opportunity to move in and out of two realities, your inner world and the world outside of you, is what I find fascinating about writing. If you just want to tell stories, there are other ways, other media, to do so.
- Laia Jufresa in BOMB Magazine
I personally feel that no one gives a shit about my books — maybe I'm just a pessimist — and that idea feels horrible and refreshing at the same time. I feel ignored and doomed to anonymity, but free to do whatever I want within the sacred space of literature. I can very easily forget about the world, which has forgotten about me since the beginning, and write my stuff to be at peace and to better understand myself and my surroundings, without trying to please anyone.
- Daniel Saldaña Paris in BOMB Magazine
Science is what we understand well enough to explain to a computer; art is everything else.
- Donal Ervin Knuth, via Visual Poetry
I want to be around people that do things. I don’t want to be around people anymore that judge or talk about what people do. I want to be around people that dream and support and do things.
- Amy Poehler
It's a terrible thing for children not to get bored and for adults not to get lost anymore
- Valeria Luiselli in BOMB Magazine
I am interested in art as a means of living a life; not as a means of making a living.
- Robert Henri
Salt on wound / And water on mud / We are only memories / On the run across time
- Fadwa Suleiman, "Genesis" translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Hacker, A Public Space No. 24, 2016.
When truly brothers, men don't sing in unison, but in harmony.

-W.H. Auden