Simon Van Booy

“The most frustrating part of trying to direct everything is not that it alienates you from people who genuinely want to help, but that it's actually impossible.”

“I think music is what language once aspired to be. Music allows us to face God on our own terms because it reaches beyond life.”

“When you give something up, you need to fill the space where it used to be, and you understand the landscape in yourself a bit more.”

“Both my parents were very supportive of me in whatever I wanted to do.”

“As a single parent, I had become tyrannical in order to survive, and anything I couldn't control caused me enormous anxiety. As a naturally untidy, disorganised man who never made lists or kept receipts, morphing into someone who could take care of a toddler on his own may have caused me to overcompensate a little.”

“The most significant conversations of our lives occur in silence.”

“I think anyone can fall in love, if you're open and you're willing, but the real test is sustaining it after all the excitement has worn off.”

“I was always a writer, by which I mean I was always scribbling away, doing something with pen and paper.”

“You were unsure which pain is worse -- the shock of what happened or the ache for what never will.”

“There are times in life when language fails us, when everything that needs to be said can be expressed only by saying nothing at all.”

“This is why fashion is such a magical part of our lives, for it inspires our decisions without dictating them; it sets the theme but not the limits of our aesthetic.”

“Language allows us to reach out to people, to touch them with our innermost fears, hopes, disappointments, victories. To reach out to people we'll never meet.It's the greatest legacy you could ever leave your children or your loved ones:The history of how you felt.”

“Life had called his name, and without thinking, he had stepped forward. He wondered if perhaps he was becoming the person he had always wanted to be.”

“Succes is really nothing more than the record of failure. To be successful means you must be willing to fail more than anyone else.”

“Your grief is something to be admired – the pain of severance. A scar where something used to be.”

“Sometimes I wake up and lie still enough to hear a petal drop from the vase of flowers. Sometimes I lie awake and wish there was someone to hear my falling.”

“When I'm doing something, I do work hard at it.”

“We cross from memory into imagination with only a vague awareness of change.”

“I think John Coltrane is one of the great American heroes, like Abraham Lincoln and Emily Dickinson.”

“The present grows within the boundaries of the past.”