It doesn’t matter how the paint is put on, as long as something is said.

Jackson Pollock

Paul Jackson Pollock (January 28, 1912 – August 11, 1956) was an influential American painter and a major figure in the abstract expressionist movement. During his lifetime, Pollock enjoyed considerable fame and notoriety. He was regarded as a mostly reclusive artist. He had a volatile personality, sometimes struggling with alcoholism. In 1945, he married the artist Lee Krasner, who became an important influence on his career and on his legacy.

Pollock died at the age of 44 in an alcohol-related car accident. In December 1956, he was given a memorial retrospective exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, and a larger more comprehensive exhibition there in 1967. More recently, in 1998 and 1999, his work was honored with large-scale retrospective exhibitions at MoMA and at The Tate in London.

In 2000, Pollock was the subject of an Academy Award–winning film Pollock directed by and starring Ed Harris.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackson_Pollock

The talent for being happy is appreciating and liking what you have, instead of what you don’t have.

Woody Allen

Woody Allen (born Allan Stewart Konigsberg; December 1, 1935) is an American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, jazz musician, author and playwright.

Allen’s distinctive films, which run the gamut from dramas to screwball sex comedies, have made him a notable American director. He is also distinguished by his rapid rate of production and his very large body of work. Allen writes and directs his movies and has also acted in the majority of them. For inspiration, Allen draws heavily on literature, sexuality, philosophy, psychology, Jewish identity, and the history of cinema, among a wealth of other fields of interest.

Allen developed a passion for music early on and is a celebrated jazz clarinetist. What began as a teenage avocation has led to regular public performances at various small venues in his hometown of Manhattan, with occasional appearances at various jazz festivals. Allen joined the Preservation Hall Jazz Band and the New Orleans Funeral Ragtime Orchestra in performances that provided the film score for his 1973 comedy Sleeper, and performed in a rare European tour in 1996, which became the subject of the documentary Wild Man Blues.

Stay committed to your decisions, but stay flexible in your approach.

Tom Robbins

Thomas Eugene “Tom” Robbins (born July 22, 1936) is an American author. His novels are abstract, often wild stories with strong social undercurrents, a satirical bent, and obscure details. He is probably best known for his novel Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (1976), which was made into a movie in 1993 directed by Gus Van Sant and starring Uma Thurman and Keanu Reeves.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Robbins

Our limitations and joys begin in our hearts. We can always replace negative with positive…

Betty Eadie

Betty (Jean) Eadie (born 1942) is a prominent American author of several books on near-death experiences (NDEs). Her best-known book is the #1 New York Times bestselling book, Embraced by the Light (1992). It describes her near-death experience. It is arguably the most detailed near-death account on record. It was followed by two other works: The Awakening Heart (1996), also a best-seller, and The Ripple Effect (1999), published independently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Eadie

Art is the most intense mode of individualism that the world has known.

Oscar Wilde

Oscar Fingal O’Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 1854 – 30 November 1900) was an Irish writer, poet, and prominent aesthete; who, after writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, became one of London’s most popular playwrights in the early 1890s. Today he is remembered for his epigrams, plays and the tragedy of his imprisonment and early death.

Wilde’s parents were successful Dublin intellectuals, and from an early age he was tutored at home, where he showed his intelligence, becoming fluent in French and German. He attended boarding school for six years, then matriculated to university at seventeen years of age. Reading Greats, Wilde proved himself to be an outstanding classicist, first at Dublin, then at Oxford. His intellectual horizons were broad: he was deeply interested in the rising philosophy of aestheticism (led by two of his tutors, Walter Pater and John Ruskin) though he also profoundly explored Roman Catholicism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oscar_Wilde

If you are lonely when you’re alone, you are in bad company.

Sartre

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre (French pronunciation: [saʁtʁ], English: /ˈsɑrtrə/; 21 June 1905 – 15 April 1980) was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy, existentialism, and Marxism, and his work continues to influence fields such as Marxist philosophy, sociology, and literary studies. Sartre was also noted for his long relationship with the author and social theorist, Simone de Beauvoir. He was awarded the 1964 Nobel Prize in Literature but refused the honour.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Paul_Sartre

A positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.

Herm Albright

He was a painter and lithographer, born on January 29, 1876 in Mannheim, Germany. He emmigrated to the United States and settled in San Francisco in 1905. He held a job with the Paul Elder Book Company for 25 years He died on September 21, 1944.

http://askville.amazon.com/Herm-Albright/AnswerViewer.do?requestId=2496014

If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.

Anthony Robbins

For the past three decades, Anthony Robbins has served as an advisor to leaders around the world. A recognized authority on the psychology of leadership, negotiations, organizational turnaround, and peak performance, he has been honored consistently for his strategic intellect and humanitarian endeavors. His nonprofit Anthony Robbins Foundation provides assistance to inner-city youth, senior citizens, and the homeless, and feeds more than three million people in 56 countries every year through its international holiday “Basket Brigade.” Robbins has directly impacted the lives of more than 50 million people from over 100 countries with his best-selling books, multimedia and health products, public speaking engagements, and live events.

http://www.tonyrobbins.com/biography.php

Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.

Helen Keller

Helen Adams Keller (June 27, 1880 – June 1, 1968) was an American author, political activist, and lecturer. She was the first deafblind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. The story of how Keller’s teacher, Anne Sullivan, broke through the isolation imposed by a near complete lack of language, allowing the girl to blossom as she learned to communicate, has become known worldwide through the dramatic depictions of the play and film The Miracle Worker.

A prolific author, Keller was well traveled, and was outspoken in her opposition to war. A member of the Socialist Party of America and the Wobblies, she campaigned for women’s suffrage, workers’ rights, and socialism, as well as many other leftist causes.

Our attitude toward life determines life’s attitude towards us.

John N. Mitchell

John Newton Mitchell (September 15, 1913–November 9, 1988) was United States Attorney General under President Richard M. Nixon. He also served as Nixon’s campaign manager in 1968 and in 1972. Due to his role as director for the Committee to Re-elect the President, which engineered the Watergate first break-in, he became the only Attorney General ever to be convicted of illegal activities.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_N._Mitchell