Graffiti 201

In Richmond for a couple days on vacation visiting my friend Matt. I love this city- great friends, food, and scenery.

"Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye." -Bill Hicks

"I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning." -J. B. Priestley

"Obsessed by a fairy tale, we spend our lives searching for a magic door and a lost kingdom of peace." -Eugene O'Neill

"Disbelief in magic can force a poor soul into believing in government and business." -Tom Robbins

Graffiti 200

"Love and compassion are necessities, not luxuries. Without them humanity cannot survive." -Dalai Lama

"Kindness in words creates confidence. Kindness in thinking creates profoundness. Kindness in giving creates love." Lao Tzu

"I believe that imagination is stronger than knowledge. That myth is more potent than history. That dreams are more powerful than facts. That hope always triumphs over experience. That laughter is the only cure for grief. And I believe that love is stronger than death." -Robert Fulghum

Graffiti 199

"When you are discontent, you always want more, more, more. Your desire can never be satisfied. But when you practice contentment, you can say to yourself, 'Oh yes - I already have everything that I really need.'" -Dalai Lama

"Discontent, blaming, complaining, self-pity cannot serve as a foundation for a good future, no matter how much effort you make." -Eckhart Tolle

"It was my dream that I had clenched in a fist of discontent and wouldn't release. But time had now pried every finger open. There is peace in an open and upraised hand that isn't grasping for anything." -Laurel Lea

Graffiti 198

"Politics is the art of controlling your environment." -Hunter S. Thompson

"Politics is the art of choosing between the disastrous and the unpalatable." -John Kenneth Galbraith

"I love power. But it is as an artist that I love it. I love it as a musician loves his violin, to draw out its sounds and chords and harmonies." -Napoleon Bonaparte

"Freedom isn't free. It shouldn't be a bragging point that 'Oh, I don't get involved in politics,' as if that makes someone cleaner. No, that makes you derelict of duty in a republic. Liars and panderers in government would have a much harder time of it if so many people didn't insist on their right to remain ignorant and blindly agreeable." -Bill Maher

Graffiti 197

Photo credit AT

Dolores "Lolita" Haze. Also a feminist fashion brand.

"The pages are still blank, but there is a miraculous feeling of the words being there, written in invisible ink and clamoring to become visible." -Vladimir Nabokov


"I prefer to accept only one type of power: the power of art over trash, the triumph of magic over the brute." -Vladimir Nabokov

"There is only one school of literature - that of talent." -Vladimir Nabokov

"I need you, the reader, to imagine us, for we don't really exist if you don't." -Vladimir Nabokov

Graffiti 196

Though not graffiti per say I was struck by the pairing of the words "Adjustable Forms".

"New needs need new techniques. And the modern artists have found new ways and new means of making their statements... the modern painter cannot express this age, the airplane, the atom bomb, the radio, in the old forms of the Renaissance or of any other past culture." -Jackson Pollock

"False thinking and false ideologies, dressed in the most pleasing forms, quietly - almost without our knowing it - seek to reduce our moral defenses and to captivate our minds. They entice with bright promises of security, cradle-to-grave guarantees of many kinds." -Ezra Taft Benson

"In my case, I used the elements of these simple forms - square, cube, line and color - to produce logical systems. Most of these systems were finite; that is, they were complete using all possible variations. This kept them simple." -Sol LeWitt

Graffiti 195

"In the end, all that time I spent in the 'Star Wars' universe fostered galaxies of creativity and made me a better person here on Earth, because it taught me that everyone counts. That's why I can sincerely and with a straight face say: 'May the Force be with you.'" -Chris Hardwick

"I'm a 'Clash of the Titans'/'Star Wars' baby. I'm not a new 'Star Wars' baby. I'm not an 'Avatar' baby. That full CG doesn't work for me. I need interactivity. I need to feel the goo. I need to feel people coming out of animatronics and just interacting with props." -Louis Leterrier

"I never got into 'Star Wars.' Maybe because they made no attempt to portray real physics. At all." -Neil deGrasse Tyson

"'Star Wars' hasn't changed my life at all." -Natalie Portman

Graffiti 194

"Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude." -Thomas Jefferson

"Don't let fear or insecurity stop you from trying new things. Believe in yourself. Do what you love. And most importantly, be kind to others, even if you don't like them." -Stacy London

"Musicians don't retire; they stop when there's no more music in them." -Louis Armstrong

Graffiti 193

"There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition." -Rod Serling

"Mystery has its own mysteries, and there are gods above gods. We have ours, they have theirs. That is what's known as infinity." -Jean Cocteau

"If the infinity of the sea may call out thus, perhaps when a man is growing old, calls come to him, too, from another infinity still darker and more deeply mysterious; and the more he is wearied by life the dearer are those calls to him." -Henryk Sienkiewicz

Graffiti 192

"As an adolescent, I went to charm school, where I learned to pour tea and relate to boys, which, as I recall, meant giving them the pickle jar to unscrew, whether it was too hard for me or not." -Sue Monk Kidd

"I don't want a pickle, just want to ride on my motorsickle." -Arlo Guthrie

"Guys, there's only one thing I hate more than bloggers who start sentences with 'guys' - and it's those mealy-mouth hipsters who crochet codpieces and their ye-olde-sideburned friends who pickle stuff and slaughter their own gluten-free goats." -Jill Soloway

"I don't believe in storks. I know they don't deliver babies; they deliver pickles." -Tracy Morgan

Graffiti 191

A boy from street artist Birdcap.

"I was such a sullen, angry, sad kid. I'm sure there are writers who have had happy childhoods, but what are you going to write about? No ghosts, no fear. I'm very happy that I had an unhappy and uncomfortable childhood." -Isabel Allende

"There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in." -Graham Greene

"I think I meant that, given the circumstances of my childhood, I had the illusion that it's easier to be alone. To have your relationships be casual and also to pose as a solitary person, because it was more romantic. You know, I was raised on the idea of the ramblin' man and the loner." -Steve Martin

Like Water

“Be like water making its way through cracks. Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object, and you shall find a way around or through it. If nothing within you stays rigid, outward things will disclose themselves.

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
-Bruce Lee

Mandala

"I saw that everything, all paths I had been following, all steps I had taken, were leading back to a single point — namely, to the mid-point. It became increasingly plain to me that the mandala is the centre. It is the exponent of all paths. It is the path to the centre, to individuation. I knew that in finding the mandala as an expression of the self I had attained what was for me the ultimate."- C. G. Jung

"Each person’s life is like a mandala – a vast, limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life. Each person’s life is like a mandala – a vast, limitless circle. We stand in the center of our own circle, and everything we see, hear and think forms the mandala of our life."- Pema Chodron

"The continual stream of new discovery, revelation and inspiration which arises at every moment is the manifestation of our clarity. We should learn to see everyday life as mandala - the luminous fringes of experience which radiate spontaneously from the empty nature of our being. The aspects of our mandala are the day-to-day objects of our life experience moving in the dance or play of the universe. By this symbolism the inner teacher reveals the profound and ultimate significance of being. Therefore we should be natural and spontaneous, accepting and learning from everything. This enables us to see the ironic and amusing side of events that usually irritate us."- Dilgo Khyentse Rinpoche

Graffiti 190

"You make 'em, I amuse 'em." -Dr. Seuss

"The only way to amuse some people is to slip and fall on an icy pavement." -E. W. Howe

"What is important, I think, is to reach as many people as you can and do it as well as you can. Reach them and inspire them or amuse them, or maybe in some odd moments help them to discover something they hadn't thought of before." -Max von Sydow

No Exit

“So this is hell. I'd never have believed it. You remember all we were told about the torture-chambers, the fire and brimstone, the "burning marl." Old wives' tales! There's no need for red-hot pokers. Hell is—other people!”

“As for me, I am mean: that means that I need the suffering of others to exist. A flame. A flame in their hearts. When I am all alone, I am extinguished.”

“I think of death only with tranquility, as an end. I refuse to let death hamper life. Death must enter life only to define it.”

“There were days when you peered into yourself, into the secret places of your heart, and what you saw there made you faint with horror. And then, next day, you didn't know what to make of it,you couldn't interpret the horror you had glimpsed the day before. Yes, you know what evil costs.”

― Jean-Paul Sartre, No Exit

Graffiti 189

"One of the things that I tell beginning writers is this: If you describe a landscape, or a cityscape, or a seascape, always be sure to put a human figure somewhere in the scene. Why? Because readers are human beings, mostly interested in human beings. People are humanists. Most of them are humanists, that is." -Kurt Vonnegut

"You cannot, in human experience, rush into the light. You have to go through the twilight into the broadening day before the noon comes and the full sun is upon the landscape." -Woodrow Wilson

"Life is like a landscape. You live in the midst of it but can describe it only from the vantage point of distance." -Charles Lindbergh

"I live in a landscape, which every single day of my life is enriching." -Daniel Day-Lewis

Graffiti 188

"Words are singularly the most powerful force available to humanity. We can choose to use this force constructively with words of encouragement, or destructively using words of despair. Words have energy and power with the ability to help, to heal, to hinder, to hurt, to harm, to humiliate and to humble." -Yehuda Berg

"The new midlife is where you realize that even your failures make you more beautiful and are turned spiritually into success if you became a better person because of them. You became a more humble person. You became a more merciful and compassionate person." -Marianne Williamson

"Let us be a little humble; let us think that the truth may not perhaps be entirely with us." -Jawaharlal Nehru

"The true mystic is always both humble and compassionate, for she knows that she does not know." -Richard Rohr

Graffiti 187

“Sometimes "No" is the kindest word.” -Vironika Tugaleva''

“We must say "no" to what, in our heart, we don't want. We must say "no" to doing things out of obligation, thereby cheating those important to us of the purest expression of our love. We must say "no" to treating ourselves, our health, our needs as not as important as someone else's. We must say “no.”  -Suzette Hinton

"Alone! Alone! No beacon, far or near! No chart, no compass, and no anchor stay!" -Ada Cambridge

"No tears in the writer, no tears in the reader. No surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader." -Robert Frost

Graffiti 186

"An artist or writer is the closest thing in the contemporary world to a shaman." -Alan Moore

"Only the knife knows what goes on in the heart of a pumpkin." -Simone Schwarz-Bart

"When there is pain, there are no words. All pain is the same." -Toni Morrison

"Luxury is the wolf at the door and its fangs are the vanities and conceits germinated by success. When an artist learns this, he knows where the danger is." -Tennessee Williams

Graffiti 185

"Always say 'no pun intended' to draw attention to the intended pun." -Teju Cole

"From there to here, and here to there, funny things are everywhere." -Dr. Seuss

"A pun is the lowest form of humor, unless you thought of it yourself." -Doug Larson

"Only the pun remains. The pun, beloved of Shakespeare, children and tabloid headline-writers, is normally eschewed in the modern, sophisticated circles in which I move." -Arthur Smith