“Everybody has experienced the defeat of their lives. Nobody has a life that worked out the way they wanted it to work out. We all begin as the hero of our own dramas, in centre stage, and inevitably life moves us out of centre stage, defeats the hero, overturns the plot and the strategy and we’re left on the sidelines, wondering why we no longer have a part, or want a part, in the whole damn thing. So everybody’s experienced this. When it’s presented to us sweetly, the feeling goes from heart to heart and we feel less isolated and we feel part of the great human chain, which is really involved with the recognition of defeat.”

— Leonard Cohen on why people enjoy listening to melancholy songs (from a BBC radio interview in 2007)

Mark Steinmetz, Lightning, Mississippi, 1994

When I was young, I believed in three things: Marxism, the redemptive power of cinema, and dynamite. Now I just believe in dynamite.

— Sergio Leone

From the book “How to Look Natural In Photos”

Beata Bartecka and Łukasz Rusznica
A curated collection of photos from the archive of the Polish secret police.

'Female assassin' who 'poisoned North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's half-brother' seen wearing 'LOL' T-shirt at airport

How can you be true and
kind at the same
time?

How?

Wings of Desire ‘Der Himmel über Berlin’ (Wim Wenders, 1987)

Coming to my own aid, I think again of solitude, of the solitude that surrounds my existence. And that thought, always so lugubrious, distressing, now, after the importance of succeeding in life, becomes almost light. Words have a weight. Importance is weightier than solitude. Though I know that solitude is harsher. But the importance of succeeding in life is a noose. It’s nothing but a noose.

— Fleur Jaeggy

Jean Seberg