"Noia is plainly an evil: to suffer it is to suffer utter unhappiness. So what is noia? Not a specific sorrow or pain (noia, the idea and nature of it, excludes the presence of any particular sorrow or pain) but simply ordinary life fully felt, lived in, known; it's everywhere, it saturates an individual. Life thus is an affliction; and not living, or being less alive (by living a shorter or less intense life) is a reprieve, or a least a lesser affliction—absolutely preferable, that is, to life."

- Giacomo Leopardi, Zibaldone (1817-1832)

Debbie Harry (Blondie), New York City and the Punk Scene in the 70's, 1970-1980 - Ph. Chris Stein

“They remained silent, while the bronze tolling passed over their heads so powerfully that they seemed to hear it in the very roots of their hair like a quiver of their flesh.”
― Gabriele D'Annunzio, The Flame

An urban jungle located in Taipei, Taiwan, by Andreas Mass

Estella Boersma

Paris nous appartient, 1958

“Do you not realize that if you demand art when you are sick you make sick the artists?”

—Daybreak, §269 (excerpt).

Saint Basil (The Prayer). third part of the Holy Rus Trilogy. 1994.

Style has no formula, but it has a secret key. It is the extension of your personality. The summation of this indefinable net of your feeling, knowledge and experience.
- Ernst Haas

Herman Leonard. Frank Sinatra. Monte Carlo. 1958

Ernst Haas, New York, 1975