La Mondaine

"Tissot was the master of a small subject - the rich - and he swathed the women in yards of fabric and painted them midflounce as they disembarked from boats, lounged in parks, or sat on window seats overlooking the sea."
- Steve Martin in An Object of Beauty, pp.14-15

50-50

"I'm about fifty-fifty on believing in God," he said. "For most of my life, I've felt that there must be more to our existence than meets the eye."
     He admitted that, as he faced death, he might be overestimating the odds out of a desire to believe in the afterlife. "I like to think that something survives after you die," he said. "It's strange to think that you accumulate all this experience, and maybe a little wisdom, and it just goes away. So I really want to believe that something survives, that maybe your consciousness endures."
     He fell silent for a very long time. "But on the other hand, perhaps it's like an on-off switch," he said. "Click! And you're gone."
     Then he paused again and smiled slightly. "Maybe that's why I never liked to put on-off switches on Apple devices."
- Steve Jobs quoted by Walter Isaacson in Steve Jobs, p.571

"I'm either going to be one of the first to be able to outrun a cancer like this, or I'm going to be one of the last to die from it ... Either among the first to make it to shore, or the last to get dumped."
- Steve Jobs quoted by Walter Isaacson in Steve Jobs, p.551

A place to eat in Vancouver

http://www.vijs.ca

Start your own online petition

www.change.org

A place to stay in London

http://www.the-hempel.co.uk

"There has to be a prize for being successful and maybe Monaco is the prize."
- James Caan

"The job of art is to chase ugliness away."
- Bono

"Solutions (often) arrive only after you've stopped looking for them."
- unattributed

"Some people don't age well even when they are young."
- Steve Jobs

goal

"Football (soccer) is a gentlemen's game played by hooligans; rugby is a hooligan's game played by gentlemen."  

printing press

In 1700, the earth's total volume of printed material equalled 60 stacks of books each as high as Mt. Everest; currently the total volume of printed material equals 90 stacks of books extending to the distance of the sun.

On average The Queen appoints 70 Knights a year, but only 15 Dames.

"It's not what happens to you, but what you do with it."
- Rick Hansen

monkey

"We are just an advanced breed of monkey, on a minor planet of a very average star."
- Stephen Hawking

Mystery

"Mystery is perhaps the greatest gift given to our species."
- Einstein

"I like an actor who disappears into (his or her) role."
- Willem Dafoe

"I can't go back to yesterday, because I was a different person then."
- Lewis Carroll

"Whatever role I take, I want people to be in my shoes."
- Michael Caine

VALENCIA, Spain—Hemingway getting ready to go out to cover the Battle of Teruel, December 1937.

control

"I left the department store business because I couldn't stand not controlling my own product, from how it's manufactured to how it's sold."

- Mickey Drexler, CEO of Gap

"You want to know the secret to building a brand? You must have the finest quality [inputs] available, and then you're in the reorder business, not the selling business."

- John Paul DeJoria

"Here's to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They're not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do."  

"He lies not because it's in his interest, he lies because it's in his nature."
- Helmut Sonnenfeldt on Henry Kissinger

"There's no such thing as a pure introvert or a pure extrovert; such men would live in lunatic asylums."
- Carl Jung

"Language is a process of free creation; its laws and principles are fixed, but the manner in which the principles of generation are used is free and infinitely varied. Even the interpretation and use of words involves a process of free creation."

- Noam Chomsky

computer programming

HEMA is a Dutch department store. The first store opened on November 4, 1926, in Amsterdam. Now there are 150 stores all over the Netherlands. HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany. HEMA was recently sold to British investment company Lion Capital. The product page is innovative:

http://producten.hema.nl

(Hat tip: RJ)

    If you want to live your life in a creative way, as an artist, you have to not look back too much. You have to be willing to take whatever you've done and whoever you were and throw them away.
    The more the outside world tries to reinforce an image of you, the harder it is to continue to be an artist, which is why a lot of times, artists have to say, 'Bye. I have to go. I'm going crazy and I'm getting out of here.' And they go and hibernate somewhere. Maybe later they re-emerge a little differently.
- Steve Jobs

"The spirit now wills his own will, and he who had been lost to the world now conquers the world."
- Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

"I learned the truth of the Zen saying that if you are willing to travel around the world to meet a teacher, one will appear next door."
- Steve Jobs quoted by Walter Isaacson