asking, how do we live? (9 December 2016)

As an artist, I feel that we must try many things - but above all we must dare to fail ... Say what you are. Not what you would like to be. Not what you have to be. Just say what you are. And what you are is good enough.

- John Cassavetes

Gena Rowlands directed by John Cassavetes in A Woman Under The Influence (1974)

Art films aren't necessarily photography. It's feeling. If we can capture a feeling of a people, of a way of life, then we made a good picture.

- John Cassavetes

Films today show only a dream world and have lost touch with the way people really are... In this country, people die at 21. They die emotionally at 21, maybe younger... My responsibility as an artist is to help people get past 21... The films are a roadmap through emotional and intellectual terrain that provides a solution on how to save pain.

- John Cassavetes

I'm a great believer in spontaneity because I think planning is the most destructive thing in the world.

- John Cassavetes

Alaa Awad, mural on the Youssef El-Gendy wall, Greek Campus, American University Cairo

Melina Mercouri looking as though nothing frightens her

My mother and father were never frightened of anything. They always felt that they should go through life happily and without fear, and they did that. And it was a great boon to my brother and myself.

- John Cassavetes

Fisherman on Mykonos with Petros, a wounded pelican he nursed back to health


And may the best of you - for it will only be the best of you, and even then only in the rarest and briefest moments - succeed in framing that most basic of questions, 'how do we live?'

- John Malkovitch

Anthony Quinn and Alan Bates in Zorba The Greek (1964)

Failure's a natural part of life.

- John Malkovitch