“Water sees us.” – Veda Austin

“Can you remember who you were, before the world told you who you should be?” – Charles Bukowski

“I’m not haunted.” – Cindy Brody

“Oh! I’ve never been here before.” – Holly Troy

“Choose your focus.” – Pam Gregory

“Our focus is an act of creation in itself.” – Paul Levy

“Build illusions that make people feel so beautiful they can’t stand to be near you.” – Rob Brezsny

“Visualize Buddha at the moment of orgasm.” – Rob Brezsny

“Only art can save us.” – Poul Pederson

“Do you believe in linear time?” – Steve, host of Who’s Gonna Save the World podcast

“Why tamper with magic?” – Joan Baez

“I foresee the end of capitalism.” –Just Seeds Artist Co-Op

“Normal is someone you don’t know.” – George Flowers

“To be an artist, you must have done something good in another lifetime.” – Jerry Saltz

“I was comfortably invisible. you were visible with a vengeance.” – Kristen Hirsch from Don’t Suck, Don’t Die

“My reality needs imagination like a bulb needs a socket. My imagination needs reality like a blind man needs a cane.” – Tom Waits

“Assume the feeling of the wish fulfilled.” – Neville Goddard

“Jim Morrison tells me that people are looking at the streets while I am looking at the moon.” – Nico

“Don’t let them tell you that there are no monsters.”. – Nick Cave

“Visual art will be the future rock-n-roll.” – Kit Krash

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” -Edgar Allan Poe

“Elphin creatures are not two-inch fey creatures; they’re very powerful scientific sorcerers. They’re not around much anymore because they can’t survive in this atmosphere. Who can survive in this atmosphere? Only beasts. Which is what we are.” – Marc Bolan

“I’m going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

“Good art doesn’t really have an expiration date on it. That’s something to be happy about, if you’re making art.” ~ Devendra Banhart

“Miracles happen every day, change your perception of what a miracle is and you’ll see them all around you.” ~ Jon Bon Jovi 

Beauty is never obscene. Facebook is creepy in its moralistic hypocrisy. – Francis Sappho Siddal

“If you fall in love with the imagination, you understand that it is a free spirit. It will go anywhere, and it can do anything.” – Alice Walker

“The mask falls, the man remains, and the hero vanishes.” – Serge Gainsbourg

“It is a beautiful and delightful sight to behold the body of the moon.” Galileo Galilei

“Only the dead have seen the end of war.” Plato

“Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can’t see from the centre.” Kurt Vonnegut

“It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backward.” – Lewis Carroll

“Instead of cursing the darkness, light a candle for where we’re going. There’s something ahead worth fighting for.” – Neil Young

“You live best as an appreciator of horizons, whether you reach them or not.” ~ David Whyte

“When you think there is only darkness, close your two eyes to open the 3rd. When you think there is only darkness, look again. Maybe it’s you that are the light With no need of a mirror.”  ~ Jordan Hoggard

“The only war that matters is the war against the imagination. All other wars are subsumed in it.” ~ Diane di Prima.

 “If you see it differently, function that way. Follow your own muse, always.” – Morgan Freeman

“When you become the image of your own imagination, it’s the most powerful thing you could ever do.” – RuPaul

“There is so much we overlook, while the abundance around us continues to shimmer, on its own.” —Naomi Shihab Nye

“Is the Heliosphere A Trailhead Cairn to Future Space Travel?” – Jordan Hoggard

“Never be limited by other people’s limited imaginations.” -Dr. Mae Jemison

“Find me near the flower’s eye
That takes in provocation
And begins to grow.” ~Rumi

“There is no shame in not knowing. The problem arises when irrational thought and attendant behavior fill the vacuum left by ignorance.”  ~ Neil deGrasse Tyson

If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now, put the foundations under them. ~ Henry David Thoreau, Walden

“You’re not to be so blind with patriotism that you can’t face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who does it or says it.” – Malcolm X

“No one should negotiate their dreams. Dreams must be free to fly high. No government, no legislature, has a right to limit your dreams. You should never agree to surrender your dreams.” – Reverend Jesse Jackson

“Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”  – Langston Hughes

“Instead of looking at the past, I put myself ahead twenty years and try to look at what I need to do now in order to get there then.” – Diana Ross

“The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” – George Orwell

“Always remember, your focus determines your reality.” – George Lucas

“You ARE the miracle.” – Rick Levine

“We can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark; the real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.” Plato

“Trust is different than hope. Don’t smoke hope. Trust. Then, act.  Sometimes action in and of itself it the ultimate trust . . . in yourself” ~Jordan Hoggard

“When you create a new vision for your life, you immediately begin to see your whole life in light of that new vision. It becomes the context of your life. Changing the context changes the meaning and possibility.” – Benjamin Hardy

“Your vision of where or who you want to be is the greatest asset you have. Without having a goal it’s difficult to score.” – Paul Arden

“Don’t let what you currently see stop you from creating in your mind and heart something far more powerful. Prayer and meditation is how you begin tapping into your creative and imaginative powers.” – Benjamin Hardy

“Live out of your imagination, not your history.” Stephen Covey

“Assume the feeling of your wish fulfilled and observe the route that your attention follows.” — Neville Goddard

“Human beings are works in progress that mistakenly think they’re finished.” ~ Dan Gilbert

“Fuck shame, make art.” ~ Amanda Palmer

“We lead strange lives, chasing our dreams around from place to place.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“People see what they wish to see. And in most cases, what they are told that they see.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

Twilight is the time when night and day make love. Love is the bridge between shadow and light. Don’t run away from your shadows! Your buried treasure is stashed inside them! Love that shadow back into the light. Give up the fight! Give up the fright!! You’re the source of light! ~ Geordie Numata, Deer Spirit Reiki

“Those who are capable to see beyond the shadows and lies of their conventional culture will never be understood, let alone believed by the masses” – Plato

“Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.” – Carl Jung

“To see we must forget the name of the thing we are looking at.” ~Claude Monet

“Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don’t.” ~ Bill Nye

“Know what is in front of your eyes and what is hidden will be disclosed to you, for there is nothing hidden that will not be revealed” – Gospel of Thomas (Gnostic Scriptures)

“I’m going to smile, and my smile will sink down into your pupils, and heaven knows what it will become.” ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

“Some men see things as they are, and ask why. I dream of things that never were, and ask why not.” Robert Kennedy

“Instructions for living a life:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.” — Mary Oliver, from “Sometimes”

“The trick to forgetting the big picture is to look at everything close up.” – Chuck Palahniuk

We think we move through the world unseen. But sometimes (just inches away even) is someone who can hold the hard stuff with you. – Andrea Scher

“For a relationship to stay alive, love alone is not enough. Without imagination, love stales into sentiment, duty, boredom. Relationships fail not because we have stopped loving but because we first stopped imagining.” ~ James Hillman

“That which is not slightly distorted lacks sensible appeal from which it follows that irregularity — that is to say, the unexpected, surprise and astonishment — is an essential part and characteristic of beauty.” ~ Charles Baudelaire

“There is a crack in everything, that’s how the light gets in.” ~ Leanord Cohen

“The sign of a beautiful person is that they see beauty in others.” – Omar Suleiman

” ‘What makes the desert beautiful,’ said the little prince, ‘is that somewhere it hides a well…’ ” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Mercy and Grace are just here; they are attributes of light, they want nothing but to be.”  ~ Hafiz

“Why should you believe your eyes? You were given eyes to see with, not to believe with. Your eyes can see the mirage, the hallucination as easily as the actual scenery.”  ~Ward Moore

“Life is like a prism. What you see depends on how you turn the glass.” ~Jonathan Kellerman

“You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” ~ Mark Twain

“Magic happens in the dark.” – Rick Levine, astrologer

“The sublime can only be glimpsed by pressing through fear’s boundary, beyond one’s previous conception of the beautiful.” – Rusty Morrison

“There are two ways of spreading light: to be the candle or the mirror that reflects it.” ~ Edith Wharton

“I have to see a thing a thousand times before I see it once.”  ~ Thomas Wolfe

“It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.”  ~ Hilary Mantel

“Curiouser and curiouser!”  ~ Lewis Carroll

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” ~Mark Twain

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Max Plank

“Do you believe in fairies?…If you believe, clap your hands!” J.M. Barrie

“Clouds come floating into my life, no longer to carry rain or usher storm, but to add color to my sunset sky.” ~ Rabindranath Tagore

“There is no scientific study more vital to man than the study of his own brain. Our entire view of the universe depends on it.”  ~ Francis Crick

“Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue, and the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.” ~E.Y. Harburg

“We went down into the silent garden. Dawn is the time when nothing breathes, the hour of silence. Everything is transfixed, only the light moves.” ~ Leonora Carrington

“I’ve named everything that I’ve ever owned. Real or inanimate, I have to give it a first and last name. Everything in my apartment comes alive at night.” ~ Amy Sedaris

“One’s destination is never a place but rather a new way of looking at things.” ~ Henry Miller

“It’s amazing how a little tomorrow can make up for a whole lot of yesterday.”  ~ John Guare

“Perhaps all the dragons in our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us act, just once, with beauty and courage. Perhaps everything that frightens us is, in its deepest essence, something helpless that wants our love.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

“There are as many styles of beauty as there are visions of happiness.”  ~ Stendhal

“What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb – but the darkness of the womb?” –Valarie Kaur

“Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream…. this is not dying.” – John Lennon

“Let me know that into the knot of self comes the thread called time, and that what I am, disgraced or blessed, came from what I was, goes to what I yet may be.” ~ from Ahabs Wife or, The Star Gazer by Sena Jeter Naslund

“We are not in the business of fighting darkness, we are farmers of light.” – Jewel

“[Writing is] like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.”  ~ E.L. Doctorow

“When I look into the future, it’s so bright it burns my eyes.” — Oprah Winfrey

“Your assumptions are your windows on the world. Scrub them off every once in a while, or the light won’t come in.”  ~ Isaac Asimov

“The trouble is, you think you have time” — Buddha

“The future belongs to those who learn more skills and combine them in creative ways.” ― Robert Greene, Mastery

“As a child I assumed that when I reached adulthood, I would have grown-up thoughts.” ~ David Sedaris

“When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” – Max Planck

“The whole point of Jesus’s life was not that we should become exactly like him, but that we should become ourselves in the same way he became himself. Jesus was not the great exception but the great example.” – Carl Jung

“You see things less clearly when you open your eyes too wide.” ~ Italo Svevo

“I had no proof that I had the stuff to be an artist, though I hungered to be one. I imagined that I felt the calling and prayed that it be so.” ―from JUST KIDS by Patti Smith

“None of us knows where to look, but all of us know not to look down . . . Our question is: what would happen if we looked down? Would it be as bad as we imagine? What might we see? Could it even be good for us?”  – Paul Kingsnorth, The Dark Mountain Project

“Ring the bells that still can ring. Forget your perfect offering. There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” – Leonard Cohen

“We tend to judge others by their behavior, and ourselves by our intentions.” – Unknown

“Permit your dreams to see the daylight.” ~ Bernard Kelvin Clive

“What you seek is seeking you.” ~ Rumi

“The eyes of compassion see the many beings
The ocean of happiness and endless life is boundless”
—Hakuin (1685-1768)
from the Lotus Sutra, calligraphed on self-portrait as Kuan-yin

“A thing that you see in my pictures is that I was not afraid to fall in love with these people.” ~ Annie Leibovitz

“Yes, I see your net, but we are here.” – Ram Dass

“Perspective is everything . . . It’s everything.” ~ Brian Glazer

“To give your positive or negative attention to something is a way of giving energy. The most damaging form of behavior is withholding your attention.”  ~ Masaru Emoto

“We live in the Time of Capital; in Machine Time. We are refugees from a war on a Time we cannot remember; a war nearly erased from our collective memories. The Time of Nature is hidden from view, and we are crippled by our loss of Time.” ~ Rhyd Wildermuth, The Time of Your Life

“We are made of stardust; why not take a few moments to look up at the family album?” ~Natalie Angier

“I’m smart enough to know that I’m dumb . . . The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.” – Richard P. Feynman

“Please believe that one single positive dream is more important than a thousand negative realities.”  ~ Adeline Yen Mah

“She believed, of course … because without something to believe in, life would be intolerable.” ~ Rosamunde Pilcher

“We don’t get what we want, we get what we believe. What do you believe is possible for you?” ~ Kelley Rosano

“I address you all tonight for who you truly are: wizards, mermaids, travelers, adventurers, and magicians. You are the true dreamers.” ~ Brian Selznick

“Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real.” ~ Nora Ephron

” . . . and so castles made of sand slip into the sea eventually.” ~ Jimi Hendrix

“I am fated to journey hand in hand with my strange heroes and to survey the surging immensity of life, to survey it through the laughter that all can see and through the tears unseen and unknown by anyone.”  ~ Nikolai Gogol

“The camera … may want to know, to develop, to expose, but what it can also do, if pressed, is reveal the flowered vacancy of the invisibilities, the mixed-up motivations, that only a wise author could portray.” — Alexander Nemerov, Silent Dialogues

“Poetry is the shadow cast by our streetlight imaginations.” ~ Lawrence Ferlinghetti

“Dreams come true. Without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.” ~ John Updike

“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales.”
― Albert Einstein

“I am enough of an artist to draw freely upon my imagination. Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”
― Albert Einstein

“This or something better now manifests for me in totally satisfying and harmonious ways, for the higest good of all concerned.” Shakti Gawain

“All that you see was and is for your sake. The numerous books, uncanny markings, and beautiful thoughts are the ghosts of souls who preceded you.” ― Khalil Gibran

“The optimist sees the rose and not its thorns; the pessimist stares at the thorns, oblivious to the rose.” ― Khalil Gibran

“Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.” ― Khalil Gibran

“He knew the depth of beauty, He was for ever surprised by its peace and its majesty.” ― Khalil Gibran

“I know faces, because I look through the fabric my own eye weaves, and behold the reality beneath.” ― Khalil Gibran

“The appearance of things changes according to the emotions; and thus we see magic and beauty in them, while the magic and beauty are really in ourselves.” ― Khalil Gibran

“Trust in dreams, for in them is the hidden gate to eternity.” ― Khalil Gibran

“Beauty is not in the face; beauty is a light in the heart.” ― Khalil Gibran

“Out of suffering have emerged the strongest souls; the most massive characters are seared with scars.” ― Khalil Gibran

“I have no advice for anybody except to, you know, be awake enough to see where you are at any given time and how that is beautiful and has poetry inside, even in places you hate.” — Jeff Buckley

“The world of achievement has always belonged to the optimist.” – J. Harold Wilkins

“You have wakened not out of sleep, but into a prior dream, and that dream lies within another, and so on, to infinity, which is the number of grains of sand. The path that you are to take is endless, and you will die before you have truly awakened.” ― Jorge Luis Borges

“Our lives are not as limited as we think they are; the world is a wonderfully weird place; consensual reality is significantly flawed; no institution can be trusted, but love does work; all things are possible; and we all could be happy and fulfilled if we only had the guts to be truly free and the wisdom to shrink our egos and quit taking ourselves so damn seriously.” ― Tom Robbins

“Dwell on the beauty of life. Watch the stars, and see yourself running with them.” ― Marcus Aurelius

“To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power. Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away. And never, never to forget.” ― Arundhati Roy

“How much does one imagine, how much observe? One can no more separate those functions than divide light from air, or wetness from water.”  ~ Elspeth Huxley

“You can easily forgive a child who is afraid of the dark, the real tragedy is when men are afraid of the light.” ~ Plato

“As we keep saying, if you can’t see it, you can’t be it. The more you actually see it — real people doing different things — the better off we are.” ~Gloria Steinem

“See the job. Do the job. Stay out of the misery.” – Maharishi

What I want is to open up. I want to know what’s inside me. I want everybody to open up. I’m like an imbecile with a can-opener in his hand, wondering where to begin – to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I’m sure of it.
I know it because I feel so marvelous myself most of the time. And when I feel that way everybody seems marvelous… everybody and everything… even pebbles and pieces of cardboard… a match stick lying in the gutter… anything… a goat’s beard, if you like. That’s what I want to write about… and then we’re all going to see clearly, see what a staggering, wonderful, beautiful world it is. -Henry Miller

“What have you been seeing and yet not looking at it?  With whom do you spend time and do not look at as much as you once did?” ~ Robert Alvarez

“To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.” ~ Anatole France

“All human beings are also dream beings. Dreaming ties all mankind together.” ~ Jack Kerouac

“Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last, you create what you will.” —George Bernard Shaw

“Focus your attention on the things that make life worth living” ~ Tommy Rosen

“The future is not there waiting for us. We create it by the power of our imagination.” ~ Pir Vilayat Khan

“There is little sense in attempting to change external conditions, you must first change inner beliefs, then outer consitions will change accordingly.” -Brian Adams

“Every moment of your life is infinitely creative and the universe is endlessly bountiful. Just put forth a clear enough request, and everything your heart desires must come to you.” ~ Shakti Gawain

Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die
Life is a broken-winged bird,
That cannot fly.  ~Langston Hughes

“You can’t study the darkness by flooding it with light.” ― Edward Abbey

“Throw your dreams into space like a kite, and you do not know what it will bring back, a new life, a new friend, a new love, a new country.” ~ Anais Nin

“I will not be just a tourist in the world of images, just watching images passing by which I cannot live in, make love to, possess as permanent sources of joy and ecstasy.” ~ Anais Nin

“It is the function of art to renew our perception. What we are familiar with we cease to see. The writer shakes up the familiar scene, and, as if by magic, we see a new meaning in it.” ~ Anais Nin

“Dreams are necessary to life.” ~ Anais Nin

“The Collage of the mind is always happening. Concepts and images are happening in the clouds. Mixing , mashing , blending images .These ideas must find a place on Earth to land safely together.” –TJK Haywood (artist)

“Gratitude is an art of painting an adversity into a lovely picture.”  ~Kak Sri

“All that we behold is full of blessings.”  ~William Wordsworth

“When I look at my life and its secret colours, I feel like bursting into tears.”  ~Albert Camus

“Lord, how the day passes! It is like a life, so quickly when we don’t watch it, and so slowly if we do.” ~ John Steinbeck

“One eye sees, the other feels.” ~ Paul Klee

“It is not arrogant or egotistical to feel good inside. You had nothing to do with it. It’s simply the honest response to clearly perceived Reality.”  ~ Erich Schiffman

“The sun shines down, and its image reflects in a thousand different pots filled with water. The reflections are many, but they are each reflecting the same sun. Similarly, when we come to know who we truly are, we will see ourselves in all people.” ~ Ammachi

“All I’m saying is that to liberate the potential of your mind, body and soul, you must first expand your imagination. You see, things are always created twice: first in the workshop of the mind and then, and only then, in reality. I call this process ‘blueprinting’ because anything you create in your outer world began as a simple blueprint in your inner world.” ~ Robin Sharma, The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari

“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Poetry is a way of looking at the world for the first time.” ~W.S. Merwin

“She who opens herself to the expanded vision of boundless awareness gains inner and outer purity” (Rk Ved)

“All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.” ~Edgar Allan Poe

“Take the first step in faith. You don’t have to see the
whole staircase, just take the first step.” — Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

“It would be wonderful to enjoy success without seeing envy in the eyes of those around you.” — Marilyn Monroe

“To see a world in a grain of sand
And heaven in a wild flower
Hold infinity in the palms of your hand
And eternity in an hour.”
– William Blake

“Imagination is everything. It is the preview of life’s coming attractions.” ― Albert Einstein

“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, Mother Night

“Human reasoning can never answer the mysteries of our lives.” -Caroline Myss

“Let go of how you thought your life should be and embrace the life that is trying to work its way into your consciousness.” -Caroline Myss

“We delight in the beauty of the butterfly, but rarely admit the changes it has gone through to achieve that beauty.” ― Maya Angelou

“You don’t need a new life, just a new lens through which to view the one you have.” -Marianne Williamson

“DISCRIMINATION IS IMPORTANT.” – Thelonious Monk

“You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” — Mark Twain

“What you focus on, you create. So focus your attention consciously, and do not allow your attention to stray to results that you aren’t interested in manifesting. Because you can, and will, create more of what you are focusing on.” — Mary Morrissey

“We don’t see things as they are, we see them as we are.” ― Anaïs Nin

“Luxury is not a necessity to me, but beautiful and good things are.” ― Anaïs Nin