Stephen Markley

“... but I know what I feel now so well: this restlessness, this feeling that whatever it is I'm doing, wherever I am, that's not where I'm supposed to be, this fierce compulsion to be everywhere and everything to everyone all at once that leaves me tired and ragged yet still always searching. So I find myself stranded in places having forgotten why I'm there, what I'm supposed to be doing, trying to lose myself and in the process getting disoriented and messy and chasing the fireflies until I've jumped from dream to dream and light to light and shooting star to shooting star so many times I can't even remember what it was I set out to find in the first place.”

“There was so little to learn from that conversation, and yet it struck me that the very existence of the conversation itself was the lesson; art has nothing to do with Life's fickle intentions: write what you want. Draw what you want. Perform what you can. In the end, the unexpected twists -- the mutated cells, the choked arteries, the swerving vans -- will always tell the ending.”

“it's simple enough, really: because they give us hope. Because they give us power. Because we want to have that feeling where everything in life melts away and all you have is a pen, a paintbrush, a guitar, a lump of clay, a basketball. We chase dreams because, in the end, it's all we know how to do.”