Quotes About Existence

There's time to spare. This is one of the things I wasn't prepared for - the amount of unfilled time, the long parentheses of nothing. Time as white sound.

Dead was not an absolute concept to her. Some people were more dead than others, and finally it was a matter of opinion who was dead and who was alive, so it was best not to discuss such a thing.

In the burned house I am eating breakfast. You understand? There is no house, there is no breakfast, yet here I am

One person alone is not a full person: we exist in relation to others. I was one person: I risked becoming no person.

Is it real? No, it is not real. What is this not real? Not real can tell us about real.

By telling you anything at all I'm at least believing in you, I believe you're there, I believe you into being. Because I'm telling you this story I will your existence. I tell, therefore you are.

The living bird is not its labeled bones.

I must admit it's a surprise to find myself still here, still talking to you. I prefer to think of it as talking, although of course it isn't: I'm saying nothing, you're hearing nothing. The only thing between us is this black line: a thread thrown onto the empty page, into the empty air.

What we consider real is also imagined; every life lived is also an inner life, a life created.

You all right? he said again. I didn't love him, I was far away from him, it was as though I was seeing him through a smeared window or glossy paper; he didn't belong here. But he existed, he deserved to be alive. I was wishing I could tell him how to change so he could get there, the place where I was. Yes, I said. I touched him on the arm with my hand. My hand touched his arm. Hand touched arm. Language divides us into fragments, I wanted to be whole.

Poetry deals with the core of human existence: life, death, renewal, change; as well as fairness and unfairness, injustice and sometimes justice. The world in all its variety.

Death makes me hungry. Maybe it's because I've been emptied; or maybe it's the body's way of seeing to it that I remain alive.

You will flicker in these words and in the words of others for a while and then go out. Even if I send them, you will never get these letters. Even if I see you again, I will never see you again.

None of this happens, of course. Or it does happen, but not so you would notice. It happens in another dimension of space.

I would like to be found. I would like to see. Or to be seen. I wonder if, in the eye of God, it amounts to the same thing.

Nobody nowhere knows what time it is.

Orpheus 2 He has been trying to sing Love into existence again And he has failed.

I am a blank, here, between parentheses. Between other people.

I and the girl in the picture have ceased to be the same person. I am her outcome, the result of the life she once lived headlong; whereas she, if she can be said to exist at all, is composed only of what I remember. I have the better view - I can see her clearly, most of the time. But even if she knew enough to look, she can't see me at all.

If the stock market exists, so must previous lives.

It hasn't escaped me that the object that keeps me alive is the same one that will kill me. In this way it's like love, or a certain kind of it.

Their youth is touching, but I know I can't be deceived by it. The young ones are often the most dangerous, the most fanatical, the jumpiest with their guns. They haven't yet learned about existence through time. You have to go slowly with them.

Death makes me hungry. Maybe it's because I've been emptied; or maybe it's the body's way of seeing to it that I remain alive, continue to repeat its bedrock prayer: I am, I am. I am, still.

I am not being wasted. Why do I want?