Diane Arbus and Bruce Lee both died prematurely, Arbus by her own hand on July 26th 1971 and Lee from a fatal reaction to a painkiller on July 20th 1973 - 40 years ago today. I wonder if they'd ever met if they would have become friends.
“I’m not in this world to live up to your expectations and you’re not in this world to live up to mine.”
“Do not pray for an easy life, pray for the strength to endure a difficult one”
“Adapt what is useful, reject what is useless, and add what is specifically your own.”
“A goal is not always meant to be reached, it often serves simply as something to aim at.”
“Art calls for complete mastery of techniques, developed by reflection within the soul.”
"If one loves, one need not have an ideology of love. "
“The meaning of life is that it is to be lived, and it is not to be traded and conceptualized and squeezed into a pattern of systems.”
"...we have more faith in what we imitate than in what we originate. We cannot derive a sense of absolute certitude from anything which has its roots in us. The most poignant sense of insecurity comes from standing alone and we are not alone when we imitate. It is thus with most of us; we are what other people say we are. We know ourselves chiefly by hearsay.”
"Always be yourself, express yourself, have faith in yourself, do not go out and look for a successful personality and duplicate it."
"If you always put limit on everything you do, physical or anything else. It will spread into your work and into your life. There are no limits. There are only plateaus, and you must not stay there, you must go beyond them."
"To hell with circumstances; I create opportunities."
"It's not the daily increase but daily decrease. Hack away at the unessential."
"The possession of anything begins in the mind."
"Nothing is ever the same as they said it was."
"The thing that's important to know is that you never know. You're always sort of feeling your way."
“One of the risks of appearing in public is the likelihood of being photographed.”
“The discouragement masquerades as the impossibility.”
"Survival is the secret so you really can't afford to doubt yourself for long because you are all you've got. The only thing to do is to go the limit with it. Exceed.”
"The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination and I think it's true. I would never choose a subject for what it means to me or what I think about it. You've just got to choose a subject - and what you feel about it, what it means, begins to unfold if you just plain choose a subject and do it enough."
{Bruce Lee attributed quotes from the top, Arbus' from "Nothing is ever the same as they said it was."}