Quotations

"It takes more time and effort and delicacy to learn the silence of a people than to learn its sounds. Some people have a special gift for this. Perhaps this explains why some missionaries, notwithstanding their efforts, never come to speak properly, to communicate delicately through silences. Although they "speak with the accent of natives" they remain forever thousands of miles away. The learning of the grammar of silence is an art much more difficult to learn than the grammar of sounds."

— Ivan Illich, Austrian priest, born 1926

"After the bones mended, my left eye was smaller than my right, and my eyebrow never grew back. But you know what? Big deal. I think I became beautiful after the accident. I became kinder, more aware. I gained respect for other people."

— Iman, Somalian-English model, born 1955

"I have no intention of ever writing beauty tips on how to make an African-American nose look slimmer or Asian eyes look bigger. That's degrading. Asian eyes are what's beautiful about you and what makes you different."

— Iman, Somalian-English model, born 1955

"I was not considered beautiful at all. Really. And this is what all models say. But I'm still not considered that beautiful in my country. I don't know the beauty ideal where I come from - but it's not me."

— Iman, Somalian-English model, born 1955

"The women I gravitate to are the ones who defy convention and reinvent themselves - hence, they reinvent the world around them."

— Iman, Somalian-English model, born 1955

"On my 50th birthday in 2005, my discount-wielding AARP card came in the mail. I hurled it in the trash, put on something fabulous, and had a decadent meal. Just the thought of putting it in my wallet felt like a concession."

— Iman, Somalian-English model, born 1955

"When I was in high school, we were, like, 4,000 or 5,000 students, and 50 girls - and I didn't have a date for my prom. My father paid my cousin to take me."

— Iman, Somalian-English model, born 1955

"One afternoon, on my way to the campus - I was majoring in political science at Nairobi University - a photographer by the name of Peter Beard stopped me in the street and asked me if I'd ever been photographed."

— Iman, Somalian-English model, born 1955

"It takes 25 years to learn to draw, one hour to learn to paint."

— Jean Ingres, French Neoclassical painter, born 1780

"To draw does not mean simply to reproduce contours; drawing does not consist merely of line: drawing is also expression, the inner form, the plane, modeling. See what remains after that."

— Jean Ingres, French Neoclassical painter, born August 29, 1780

"The exhibition has now become no more than a bazaar where mediocrity spreads itself out with impudence. The exhibitions are useless and dangerous... they ought to be abolished."

— Jean Ingres, French Neoclassical painter, born 1780

"Ladies and gentleman, I've suffered for my music, now it's your turn."

— Neil Innes, English comedian and musician, born 1944

"The light of memory, or rather the light that memory lends to things, is the palest light of all... I am not quite sure whether I am dreaming or remembering, whether I have lived my life or dreamed it. Just as dreams do, memory makes me profoundly aware of the unreality, the evanescence of the world, a fleeting image in the moving water."

— Eugene Ionesco, Romanian-French playwright, born 1909

"If one does not understand the usefulness of the useless and the uselessness of the useful, one cannot understand art."

— Eugene Ionesco, Romanian-French playwright, born 1909