Quotes About Life

This is one of the problems with reality: the extent to which it resembles bad fiction.

Given the world, given the situation, the question that remains is whether having children is a statement of hope, an insistence on the beauty and meaningfulness and basic worth of being here, or an act of human sacrifice.

Mark Oppenheimer

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…

Frustration is a poignant reminder of ongoing vitality. Enjoy it while you can't.

If you look out at nature, you find that as you tend to see suspended animation, you tend to see immortality.

It is the poet and philosopher who provide the community of objectives in which the artist participates. Their chief preoccupation, like the artist, is the expression in concrete form of their notions of reality. Like him, they deal with the verities of time and space, life and death, and the heights of exaltation as well as the depths of despair. The preoccupation with these eternal problems creates a common ground which transcends the disparity in the means used to achieve them.

What is best about our lives -the moments when we are, as we would put it, at our happiest- is both pleasant and deeply unpleasant. Happiness is not a feeling; it is a way of being. If we focus on the feelings, we will miss the point.

Para nosotros ningún momento es completo en sí mismo. Cada momento se ve adulterado, empañado por lo que recordamos que ha sido y lo que anticipamos que será. En cada momento de nuestra vida la flecha del tiempo nos mantiene inocentes y moribundos, y por eso creemos que somos superiores a los demás animales.

It is consciousness that brings both suffering and enjoyment to the world.

La culpa no la tiene ninguna de las personas a las que llamo amigos, sino yo. Me falta algo. Y con el paso de los años me he ido dando cuenta poco a poco de que las decisiones que he tomado y la vida que he vivido han sido una respuesta a esa falta. Lo más significativo de mí, supongo, es lo que me falta.

A zoologist from another universe, where we can suppose the two laws do not apply, might justifiably classify most earthly fauna as subspecies of worm. We are superstructures built on and around our alimentary canal — on and around the worm that we once were.

The meaning of life — that is something for a simpler time.

Kenny, when's the last time you had a physical," Roddy asks. "What're you...the designated driver of my life?" "Mad Dog House

You don't have to make any decisions right now," Colleen says. "But I'll tell you this. There's life after marriage." ~Excerpt from "Mad Dog Justice

I have stories to tell. I have no theories, no advice, just stories.

Conflict reveals character--in life and in the novel.

The writing life: frustration, fear, independence, exhilaration, worry, adventure, a sense of the unknown.

Make art from your own life. Bring insight to your suffering, find distance, and in your maturity, write about it. Conflict & drama are the essence of a novel.

There's a novel in every life's story. You must have courage, perseverance and use imagination to unearth it.

There's no such thing as a dull life. Every life is a saga.

The writing life is not for the timid. It's filled with challenge, uncertainty & frustration, but it's a beautiful, expansive & creative one

People say funny things all the time during really serious moments in life.

Death, like life, finds meaning in our connections to each other. Grief is bearable only because it can be shared.