Jonas Mekas > Quotes

“In the very end, civilizations perish because they listen to their politicians and not to their poets.”
― Jonas Mekas

“I read a lot. I listen a lot. I think a lot. But so little remains. The books I read, their plots, their protagonists fade. The university lectures that I had found pretty impressive on first hearing, have faded away. Now I am listening to one on Pirandello. Names of people, books, cities. They are already fading away. Even the titles of films I’ve seen recently — they have already faded. Authors of thousands of books I’ve read... All that remains are the colours of their bindings, their covers. I don’t remember much about Beauty and the Beast, but I remember clearly, vividly the hear of the day as we were crossing the Rhine bridge, to see the film. Everything that I see, or red, or listen to, connects, translates into moods, bits of surroundings, colors. No, I am not a novelist. No precision of observation, detail. With me, everything is mood, mood, or else —simply nothingness.”
― Jonas Mekas, I Had Nowhere to Go

“And I sit here alone and far from you and it’s night and I’m reflecting on everything all around me and I am thinking of you. I saw it in your eyes, in your love, you too are swinging towards the depths of your own being in longer and longer circles. I saw happiness and pain in your eyes and reflections of the paradises lost and regained and lost again, that terrible loneliness and happiness, yes, and I reflect upon this and I think about you.
(from As I Was Moving Ahead I Occasionally Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty, 2000)”
― Jonas Mekas

“The pain is stronger than ever. I've seen bits of lost Paradises and I know I'll be hopelessly trying to return even if it hurts. The deeper I swing into the regions of nothingness the further I'm thrown back into myself, each time more and more frightening depths below me, until my very being becomes dizzy. There are brief glimpses of clear sky, like falling out of a tree, so I have some idea where I'm going, but there is still too much clarity and straight order of things, I am getting always the same number somehow. So I vomit out broken bits of words and syntaxes of the countries I've passed through, broken limbs, slaughtered houses, geographies. My heart is poisoned, my brain left in shreds of horror and sadness. I've never let you down, world, but you did lousy things to me.
(from "As I was moving ahead occasionally I saw brief glimpses of beauty", 2000)”
― Jonas Mekas

“Seek the insignificant small but essential qualities, essential to life.”
― Jonas Mekas

“So what? Don't we have enough ugliness already? And don't we know these things already? Why always fight ugliness with ugliness, stupidity wit stupidity, displaying still more and more of it? Why not create something beautiful to fight the ugliness with? Not that I am for escapism (although there is nothing wrong with it). René Clair was not an escapist in A Nous la Liberté. And Chaplin never was. No poet ever is. Neither are tulips, willow trees, Louise Brooks, or cranes. But they fight ugliness just by being there, by emanating beauty, peace, truth.”
― Jonas Mekas, Movie Journal: The Rise of a New American Cinema, 1959-1971

“Some day, years later, in our memories, we'll return back to these places, and we'll toss about and we won't be able to sleep, thinking, remembering...it will all come back and we won't be able to change anything...
So I wish that then, years later, you wouldn't regret anything and you wouldn't want to change anything at all - a life lived perfectly, a perfect memory...”
― Jonas Mekas, I Had Nowhere to Go

“Kartais aš jaučiuos kaip šuva. Aš prisirišu prie kiekvienos vietos, kurioje aš pasilieku ilgiau negu vieną dieną. Numeskit, sakau, mane dykiausioj dykumoje, palikit mane joje. Grįžę po kelių dienų jūs rasite mane jau įleidusį į ją šaknis, į patį jos vidurį.”
― Jonas Mekas, I Had Nowhere to Go

“I just sit. Or I walk and walk.
Or I stand somewhere looking at one spot.
And it seems to me as I stand here that I am totally disconnected from the rest of the world around me. Nothing, absolutely nothing connects me with it.
The world around me goes on being busy, conducts its wars, enslaves countries, kills people, tortures. The real world...
My life till now seems to have slipped through this real world without participating in it, without caring about it, without any connection to it. Even when I was in the very middle of it, I wasn't really there.
My only life connection is in these scribbles.
Here I stand, this moment, now, with my arms hanging down, the shoulders fallen, eyes on the floor, beginning my life from point zero.
I don't want to connect myself to this world.
I am searching for another world to which it would be worth connecting myself.”
― Jonas Mekas, I Had Nowhere to Go

“How to live? To fall, to fall, with eyes closed, to fall into every occasion, into everything.”
― Jonas Mekas, I Had Nowhere to Go

“Aš sėdžiu šį vakarą, rašau, ir galvoju. Tikrai pasakius, aš negalvoju. Aš ne galvojantis žmogus. Su galva toli nenueisi. Aš tik sėdžiu taip ir klausaus, kas ateina iš erdvių gilumos, bandydamas atspėti, kas yra tikrai svarbu. Ir lyg girdžiu, kad tikrumoje niekas nėra svarbu, kad viskas praeina, kad viskas yra lygiai svarbu, ir kad mes visi esam tik lašeliai pasaulio ir gyvenimo vandenyne - tik ašara ant Fatimos veido - ir kad visos mūsų galvos ir idėjos ir sistemos yra tik niekas, tik niekas. Niekas, palyginant su širdimi, švelniu geru žodžiu, švelniu palietimu, pabučiavimu, žmogaus su žmogumi susitikimu, atviru žodžių pasikeitimu, padrąsinimu ar draugyste. A, visi tie nedideli žmogiški jausmai, emocijos, padainavimai kartu, ar eini ir išgeri alaus su kuo, gal net ant peties, kaip sako, paverki gal net. A, kaip viskas tai svarbu, daug giliau ir svarbiau, negu visos politinės ir ekonominės sistemos.”
― Jonas Mekas, Laiškai iš Niekur

“Ak, visa, ką davei, trokštu išgyventi, kiekvieną daiktą ir pojūtį - visą save ir pasaulį - kol ateis mirtis, kol ateis kita.”
― Jonas Mekas, Žmogus prie lyjančio lango

“I talk very often in my films that Paradise is not yet lost, there are little bits of Paradise preserved. I am very interested to keep and protect what has really come to us from the past, and to protect what is essential to human beings. I have one song on that subject, and that song you know I was singing three weeks ago with the Big Band group. I was singing, "We are not going to betray you/those who were before us/I am with you here and now/we are not going to betray you/you who did everything to make sure that humanity would go to some other more subtle direction..." So, in that sense I am very conservative. I want to conserve the best that has been done before us by others before us, in that sense.”
― Jonas Mekas

“A meeting with nature means to me sometimes more than meeting with a person. It wakes up feelings, memories. Its arrows shoot deep, always on target”
― Jonas Mekas, I Had Nowhere to Go

“People were rushing by, all hurrying to die”
― Jonas Mekas, I Had Nowhere to Go

“mano namai yra visas pasaulis,
visa naktis yra mano guolis.”
― Jonas Mekas, Žmogus prie lyjančio lango

“nėra kelio atgal, niekados nėra kelio atgal į vaikystę niekados negalima gyvent savo gyvenimo vėl iš pradžios ar eit atgalios.”
― Jonas Mekas, My Night Life

“I do not understand, I never really understood, never really lived in the so-called real world. I lived… I live in my own imaginary world, which is as real as any other world, as real as the real worlds of all the other people around me.”
― Jonas Mekas

“Mes gyvenam ir atrodom, lyg gyventumėm nuolatiniam proteste prieš šio šimtmečio idiotizmą.”
― Jonas Mekas, I Had Nowhere to Go

“My life is as confusing as the mountains.
You can't get to the top of a mountain by walking straight. You walk through and around the fields, up and down, narrow passages, paths - the road that is ten times longer than the actual straight distance... And it always looks as if that peak, that summit is so near, maybe just minutes away - but you walk for three more hours, and you look up and the distance is still the same. The mountains upset the logic of lines, perspectives, time, space, distance. Everything's so different, in the mountains. So then, what about life?...”
― Jonas Mekas, I Had Nowhere to Go

“And I sit here alone and far from you and it’s night and I’m reflecting on everything all around me and I am thinking of you. I saw it in your eyes, in your love, you too are swinging towards the depths of your own being in longer and longer circles. I saw happiness and pain in your eyes and reflections of the paradises lost and regained and lost again, that terrible loneliness and happiness, yes, and I reflect upon this and I think about you.
(in 'As I Was Moving Ahead I Occasionally Saw Brief Glimpses of Beauty')”
― Jonas Mekas

“pasidaryt mažesniam reikia daug laiko.”
― Jonas Mekas, My Night Life

“Kodėl mes vis užmirštam širdį, lyg ji būtų mėsos gabalas? Mes kalbam apie traktorius, ir apie roką, ir apie sūrius, NATO, bet užmirštam širdį, kur viskas prasideda ir viskas pasibaigia...”
― Jonas Mekas, Laiškai iš Niekur

“Pasaulis ima viską per rimtai. Pasauly žmonės žudos dėl idėjų. Idėjos pasidarė per rimtos.”
― Jonas Mekas, Laiškai iš Niekur

“Education is the resistance to everything that is bad today.”
― Jonas Mekas

“Daug keliauju. Tai žmonės manęs vis klausia, iš kur aš. Tai sakau: aš gimiau ir išaugau Lietuvoj. Gyvenu Niujorke. O mano kraštas dabar yra kultūra.
Tai jie žiūri į mane, mirksi: a, juokdarys.
Bet aš kalbu labai rimtai. Dabar aš įdomaujuos tiktai kultūra. O kultūra yra visur ir niekur.”
― Jonas Mekas, Laiškai iš Niekur

“Mano gyvenimas yra šakotas, chaotiškas, ir be plano. Visi planuotojai nuvedė pasaulį labai blogais keliais.”
― Jonas Mekas, Laiškai iš Niekur

“Miestuose per daug cemento ir batų, batukų. Kultūra yra basose kojose.”
― Jonas Mekas, Laiškai iš Niekur

“o kad taip visi nustotų dirbę lygiai trečią valandą kasdien ir išvalytų visus kambarius tai Niujorke nebebūtų tiek tarakonų.”
― Jonas Mekas, My Night Life

“Bet aš negaliu palikti nei vienos vietos be žaizdos savo prisiminimuose.”
― Jonas Mekas, I Had Nowhere to Go