Jane Austen – A woman with such literary vision that she shifted the norm beyond what anyone thought imaginable. Her books are timeless and generation after generation latches onto her stories of love and loss. She may be one of the oldest in this group but she certainly would hold her own at the dinner table. If she were alive today, we would totally be BFFS. I simply love her.
“For what do we live, but to make sport for our neighbors and laugh at them in our turn?”
“In nine cases out of ten, a woman had better show more affection than she feels.”
“I have been a selfish being all my life, in practice, though not in principle.”
“The person, be it gentleman or lady, who has not pleasure in a good novel, must be intolerably stupid.”
“There are certainly not so many men of large fortune in the world, as there are pretty women to deserve them.”
Tupac Shakur – Thug. Musician. Poet. Love to hate him or hate to love him. His words are some of the most beautiful, profound, and shocking of our time. He may be dead but his voice will forever live on through a generation of youth that connected with his soul.
“Did you hear about the rose that grew from a crack in the concrete? Proving nature’s laws wrong, it learned to walk without having feet. Funny, it seems to by keeping it’s dreams; it learned to breathe fresh air. Long live the rose that grew from concrete when no one else even cared…”
― Tupac Shakur, The Rose That Grew from Concrete
Henry David Thoreau – Simple living was Thoreau’s speciality. I admire everything about his calm nature and his disregard to the social push for progression. If serenity can be found not in more technological advances but in returning to the nature we were born into Thoreau was truly at peace. He was quoted saying, “Most of the luxuries and many of the so-called comforts of life are not only not indispensable, but positive hindrances to the elevation of mankind.” I couldn’t have said it better.
“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life…” — Henry David Thoreau, Walden
Butch Cassidy – The life of an outlaw may be reckless, sinful, and chaotic BUT if I could time travel back to the Great West I wouldn’t have it any other way. Adventure. Crime. Lawlessness. Butch Cassidy had game. If I saw him walk into a bar these days you can bet I would fall for this bad boy. Call him a criminal but I’m just fine swigging a shot of whiskey with him. Besides I think him and Jane would have some serious chemistry. Quotes below from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid the movie…I’m considering it historically accurate. Roll your eyes at me if you want to.
“Boy, I got vision, and the rest of the world wears bifocals.”
“If he’d just pay me what he’s paying them to stop me robbing him, I’d stop robbing him.”
“Don’t ever hit your mother with a shovel. It will leave a dull impression on her mind.”
Helen Levitt – I needed one more woman to even out the mix and I wouldn’t dream of adding in anyone but Helen. Her photography makes my heart sing. The images she captures were so raw and real you could write a novel off of a single photograph. Each story freezes a moment in time and at some point in your analyzation you slide right into her reality. All of a sudden the streets of Brooklyn surround you…Children scream as the fire hydrants blast out sewer water, dogs bark from 2nd story windows, and old ladies shout and wave broomsticks at teenagers smoking on their stoop. Her photographs tell a story of a neighborhood. The people that populate it become works of art through her lens.
Who would you invite to dinner??
