Courtesy of Gretchen Rubin Moment of Happiness
“Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us but we can’t strike them all by ourselves.”
Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate (Amazon, Bookshop)
“Each age brings with it its own light, its particular feeling for space, as a definite need.”
Henri Matisse, “The Role and Modalities of Colour”
“I shall never have the garden I have in my mind, but that for me is the joy of it; certain things can never be realized and so all the more reason to attempt them.”
Jamaica Kincaid, My Garden (Book): (Amazon, Bookshop)
“I became unique and I felt I was needed: my own eyes were needed in order that the copper-red of the beech could be set against the blue of the cedar and the silver of the poplars. When I went away, the landscape fell to pieces, and no longer existed for anyone; it no longer existed at all.”
Simone de Beauvoir, Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter (Amazon, Bookshop)
“So coming back from a journey, or after an illness, before habits had spun themselves across the surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt something emerge. Life was most vivid then.”
Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse (Amazon, Bookshop)
“When asked how to create the open-mode mental state necessary for creativity, John Cleese explained:
‘I can at least tell you how to get yourselves into the open mode. You need five things:
Space
Time
Time
Confidence
A 22 inch waist
Sorry, my mind was wandering. I’m getting into the open mode too quickly. Instead of a 22 inch waist, you need humor. I do beg your pardon.'”
John Cleese, “Lecture on Creativity”
“Contemplate the extent and stability of the heavens, and then at last cease to admire worthless things.”
Boethius
