Kiki Smith Quotes

Don't believe what your eyes are telling you. All they show is limitation. Look with your understanding, find out what you already know, and you'll see the way to fly.

Never limit yourself because of others' limited imagination; never limit others because of your own limited imagination.

There's no right one way to go through life.

A literary influence is never just a literary influence. It's also an influence in the way you see everything - in the way you feel your life.

Reality is a narrow little house which becomes a prison to those who can't get out of it.

Forget everything you've ever learned about the stars and they'll once more be transformed into angels, or into children, or into whatever you want to believe at that moment. It won't make you more stupid - after all, it's only a game - but it could enrich your life.

I believe that my observations have always led me to find that the so-called realist moves about the world with a closed mind, ringed as it were with concrete and cement, and that the so-called romantic is like an unfenced garden in and out of which truth can wander at will.

The freedom of an individual depends upon that individual's freedom to alter his considerations of space, energy, time and life and his roles in it. If he cannot change his mind about these, he is then fixed and enslaved amidst barriers such as those of the physical universe, and barriers of his own creation. Man thus is seen to be enslaved by barriers of his own creation. He creates these barriers himself, or by agreeing with things which hold these barriers to be actual.

Life is more or less a lie, but then again, that's exactly the way we want it to be.

Writing is finally a series of permissions you give yourself to be expressive in certain ways. To leap. To fly. To fail.

Mind is nothing but dreams and dreams - dreams of the past, dreams of the future, dreams of how things should be, dreams of great ambitions, achievements. Dreams and desires, that is the stuff mind is made of. But it surrounds you like a China Wall. And because of it the fish remains unaware of the ocean.

It may be that we are puppets-puppets controlled by the strings of society. But at least we are puppets with perception, with awareness. And perhaps our awareness is the first step to our liberation. (1974)

I want to be free Michael, just for once in my whole life I want to be free" "You are free. You just don't know it yet

Education is the way to achieve far-reaching results, it is the proper way to promote compassion and tolerance in society.

The way I think of the psychedelics is, they are catalysts to the imagination.

Make a little space, and get out of your own way.

To say that a writer's hold on reality is tenuous is an understatement-it's like saying the Titanic had a rough crossing. Writer's build their own realities, move into them and occasionally send letters home. The only difference between a writer and a crazy person is that a writer gets paid for it.

There is psychological pleasure in this takeoff, too, for the swiftness of the plane’s ascent is an exemplary symbol of transformation. The display of power can inspire us to imagine analogous, decisive shifts in our own lives, to imagine that we, too, might one day surge above much that now looms over us.” P. 38-39

We all move uneasily within our restraints.

Why are all reflections lovelier than what we call reality? -- not so grand or so strong, it may be, but always lovelier? Fair as is the gliding sloop on the shining sea, the wavering, trembling, unresting sail below is fairer still...All mirrors are magic mirrors. The commonest room is a room in a poem when I turn to the glass...There must be a truth involved in it, though we may but in part lay hold of the meaning.

Life is not about focusing on the obstacles. It's about how you handle them, and whether you get enlightenment or levity from the way you do it

You've got to know when to let a woman go if you want to keep her,and if you don't want to keep her you let her go anyhow so it's always a process of letting go, one way or the other.

Why wouldn't you write to escape yourself as much as you might write to express yourself? It's far more interesting to write about others.

You are free, you just don't know it" ~Michael to Sarah

What Degas called 'a way of seeing' must consequently bear a wide enough interpretation to include way of being, power, knowledge, and will.