adam shand

2008

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, music, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don't bother concealing your thievery - celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case, always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: “It's not where you take things from - it's where you take them to.” — Jim Jarmusch

Politics is the art of preventing people from taking part in affairs which properly concern them. — Paul Valéry, “Tel Quel 2” (1943)

History is the most dangerous concoction the chemistry of the mind has produced. Its properties are well known. It sets people dreaming, intoxicates them, engenders false memories, exaggerates their reflexes, keeps old wounds open, torments their leisure, inspires them with megalogmania or persecution complex, and makes nations bitter, proud, insufferable and vain. <p>History can justify anything you like. It teaches strictly nothing, for it contains and gives examples of everything. — Paul Valéry, “Regards sur le monde Actuel”

Every kind of addiction is bad, no matter whether the drug be alcohol, morphine or idealism. — Carl Jung

It’s only after you’ve lost everything, that you’re free to do anything. — Tyler Durden, “Fight Club”

When you bow deeply to the universe it bows back; when you call out the name of God, it echoes inside you. — Morihei Ueshiba, “The Art of Peace”

Get into the water and THEN dump the bag of ice in. This allows your body to slowly get used to the cold water. It sure beats screaming like a little girl when you suddenly sit your butt on 35 degree water … — GootzTX, runnersworld.com

We are powerless over much of the world; we are powerless over ourselves, and it is the latter powerlessness which is most intimate, most acute, most important. Finally, what we seek by ascetic discipline, what we seek by mystical ecstasy, what we seek by self-starvation, what we seek by intoxication, what we seek by self-mutilation, what we seek by sadomasochism, is a letting-go into that powerlessness, a reconciliation with ourselves as objects, a destruction or releasement of subjectivity. — Crispin Sartwell, "The Art of Mutilation"

The past is a kind of future that has already happened. — Bruce Sterling, The Users Guide To Steampunk

He lay … spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum … He felt bad. — Kingsley Amis, “Lucky Jim”