Quotes About Meaning

When the Stranger says: 'What is the meaning of this city? Do you huddle close together because you love each other?' What will you answer? 'We all dwell together To make money from each other'? or 'This is a community'? And the Stranger will depart and return to the desert.

Why am I fighting to live, If I am just living to fight Why am I trying to see. When there aint nothing in sight Why am I trying to give, When no one gives me a try Why am I dying to live, If I am just living to die?

The ultimate blissful pleasure is that which we created beings give back in return—when a lost soul returns, a hidden spark of meaning is restored to its place, a piece of the world that seemed unsalvageable, ugly and sinister is transformed so that it shines—even if but for a moment—with its essential, primordial light.

The words and the stories of Torah are but its clothing; the guidance within them is its body.

I thought how little interest the men before me had in the results of the war, and how little knowledge they had of "what it was all about.

To read fiction means to play a game by which we give sense to the immensity of things that happened, are happening, or will happen in the actual world. By reading narrative, we escape the anxiety that attacks us when we try to say something true about the world. This is the consoling function of narrative — the reason people tell stories, and have told stories from the beginning of time.

The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was meaningless.

A narrator should not supply interpretations of his work; otherwise he would have not written a novel, which is a machine for generating interpretations.

Translation is the art of failure.

Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequenter: grasp the words, and the subject will follow.

I lacked the courage to investigate the weaknesses of the wicked, because I discovered they are the same as the weaknesses of the saintly.

Semiotics is in principle the discipline studying everything which can be used in order to lie. If something cannot be used to tell a lie, conversely it cannot be used to tell the truth: it cannot in fact be used to tell at all.

But if there is no cosmic Plan? What a mockery, to live in exile when no one sent you there. Exile from a place, moreover, that does not exist.

stat rosa pristina nomine, nomina nuda tenemus

Yes, I know, it's not the truth, but in a great history little truths can be altered so that the greater truth emerges.

Dios ha muerto, el arte dejó de existir, la historia ha llegado a su fin, y yo mismo no me siento del todo bien.

For two years I have refused to answer idle questions on the order of Is your novel an open work or not? How should I know? That is your business, not mine. Or With which of your characters do you identify? For God's sake, with whom does an author identify? With the adverbs, obviously.

The good of a book lies in its being read. A book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in turn speak of things. Without an eye to read them, a book contains signs that produces no concept; therefore, it is dumb.

But the meaning of identity is now based on hatred, on hatred for those who are not the same. Hatred has to be cultivated as a civic passion. The enemy is the friend of the people. You always want someone to hate in order to feel justified in your own misery.

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn't ask ourselves what it says but what it means, a precept that the commentators of the holy books had very clearly in mind.

I don't believe one writes for oneself. I think that writing is an act of love- you write in order to give something to someone else. To communicate something. to have other people share your feelings. This problem of how long your work survives is fundamental for a novelist or a poet. One hopes for a sense of continuity.

The good of a book lies in it being read. A Book is made up of signs that speak of other signs, which in turn speak of things.

Rem tene, verba sequentur: grasp the subject, and the words will follow. This, I believe, is the opposite of what happens with poetry, which is more a case of verba tene, res sequentur. grasp the words, and the subject will follow.

La seule chose qu'on écrit pour soi, c'est la liste des courses. Elle sert à vous rappeler ce que vous devez acheter, et une fois vos achats accomplis, vous pouvez la jeter car elle ne sert plus à personne. Tout ce que vous écrivez d'autre, vous l'écrivez pour dire quelque chose à quelqu'un.