
“Musique and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.”
March 9, 1666
Diary
Salon.com column http://www.salon.com/mwt/col/waldman/2005/08/15/judgment/index1.html
“Musique and women I cannot but give way to, whatever my business is.”
March 9, 1666
Diary
Four Screenplays of Ingmar Bergman (1960).
Context: People ask what are my intentions with my films — my aims. It is a difficult and dangerous question, and I usually give an evasive answer: I try to tell the truth about the human condition, the truth as I see it. This answer seems to satisfy everyone, but it is not quite correct. I prefer to describe what I would like my aim to be. There is an old story of how the cathedral of Chartres was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Then thousands of people came from all points of the compass, like a giant procession of ants, and together they began to rebuild the cathedral on its old site. They worked until the building was completed — master builders, artists, labourers, clowns, noblemen, priests, burghers. But they all remained anonymous, and no one knows to this day who built the cathedral of Chartres.
Regardless of my own beliefs and my own doubts, which are unimportant in this connection, it is my opinion that art lost its basic creative drive the moment it was separated from worship. It severed an umbilical cord and now lives its own sterile life, generating and degenerating itself. In former days the artist remained unknown and his work was to the glory of God. He lived and died without being more or less important than other artisans; 'eternal values,' 'immortality' and 'masterpiece' were terms not applicable in his case. The ability to create was a gift. In such a world flourished invulnerable assurance and natural humility. Today the individual has become the highest form and the greatest bane of artistic creation.
The smallest wound or pain of the ego is examined under a microscope as if it were of eternal importance. The artist considers his isolation, his subjectivity, his individualism almost holy. Thus we finally gather in one large pen, where we stand and bleat about our loneliness without listening to each other and without realizing that we are smothering each other to death. The individualists stare into each other's eyes and yet deny the existence of each other.
We walk in circles, so limited by our own anxieties that we can no longer distinguish between true and false, between the gangster's whim and the purest ideal. Thus if I am asked what I would like the general purpose of my films to be, I would reply that I want to be one of the artists in the cathedral on the great plain. I want to make a dragon's head, an angel, a devil — or perhaps a saint — out of stone. It does not matter which; it is the sense of satisfaction that counts.
Regardless of whether I believe or not, whether I am a Christian or not, I would play my part in the collective building of the cathedral.
“I don't give my phone number to strangers. It's Plaza 5048.”
to her future husband when he asked for her phone number after their first dance.[citation needed]
Page 238
2000s, (2008)
46m02s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7mB_WlihQo#t=46m02s
Nina Paley on: Sita Sings the Blues: The Ramayana and 'Free Culture' (2009)
in Twitter, on Madonna's recent statement on behalf of the punk rock group Pussy Riot, using an abbreviated form of the Russian word for whore (Augus 08, 2012)
Rogozin vs. Madonna http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2012/08/09/rogozin_vs_madonna
Rogozin tweets criticism of Madonna http://www.upi.com/Entertainment_News/Music/2012/08/09/Rogozin-tweets-criticism-of-Madonna/UPI-94801344553635/
Original: Каждая бывшая б. с возрастом стремится читать всем лекции о морали. Особенно во время зарубежных турне и гастролей…
1940s, To Every Briton (1940)
Context: This is no appeal made by a man who does not know his business. I have been practising with scientific precision non-violence and its possibilities for an unbroken period of over fifty years. I have applied it in every walk of life, domestic, institutional, economic and political. I know of no single case in which it has failed. Where it has seemed sometimes to have failed, I have ascribed it to my imperfections. I claim no perfection for my self. But I do claim to be a passionate seeker after Truth, which is but another name for God. In the course of the search the discovery of non-violence came to me. Its spread is my life-mission. I have no interest in living except for the prosecution of that mission.
Source: The King of Lies (2006), Ch. 10.
Top 15 quotes from PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi