Quotes About Meaning

Le nostre parole sono spesso prive di significato. Ciò accade perché le abbiamo consumate, estenuate, svuotate con un uso eccessivo e soprattutto inconsapevole. Le abbiamo rese bozzoli vuoti. Per raccontare, dobbiamo rigenerare le nostre parole. Dobbiamo restituire loro senso, consistenza, colore, suono, odore. E per fare questo dobbiamo farle a pezzi e poi ricostruirle.

Dove ci sono buone notizie non c'è letteratura - chi lo ha detto? La letteratura esiste solo per indagare le meccaniche dell'infelicità; se no è spazzatura, è robaccia commerciale, a prescindere. In ogni caso per evitare equivoci, tu sei sempre stato d'accordo con questa idea di letteratura. Il che è normale, se sei un intellettuale fallito.

Chiunque detenga il potere può controllare anche il linguaggio, e non solo con le proibizioni della censura, ma cambiando il significato delle parole".

At times of disorientation people need to go back to identity, purpose, and context.

I've always had questions about what it meant to be a protester, to be in the minority. Are the people who are trying to find peace, who are trying to have the Constitution apply to everybody, are they really the radicals? We're not protesting from the outside. We're inside.

Either criticism is no good at all (a very defensible position) or else criticism means saying about an author the very things that would have made him jump out of his boots.

Coincidences are spiritual puns.

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me the only tragedy is to allow part of us to die - whether it is our spirit, our creativity or our glorious uniqueness.

While we have the gift of life, it seems to me that only tragedy is to allow part of us to die—whether it is our spirit, our creativity, or our glorious uniqueness.

Writing has nothing to do with meaning. It has to do with landsurveying and cartography, including the mapping of countries yet to come.

Identity, integretation, and imagination-basic,mysterious,powerful,complex,and mostly unconscious operations-are at the heart of even the simplest possible meanings. The value of the simplest forms lies in the complex emergent dynamics they trigger in the imaginative mind. These basic operations are the key to both the invention of everyday meaning and exceptional human creativity.

Because the construction of meaning requires many kinds of integration networks in addition to simplex networks, a great deal of semantics falls outside the realm of symbolic logic.

Because linguistic expressions prompt for meanings rather than represent meanings, linguistic systems do not have to be, and in fact cannot be, analogues of conceptual systems. Prompting for meaning construction is a job they can do; representing meanings is not.

Ever have a day when you wonder what, if anything, is worth doing? Forget about doing anything well: I'm talking about simply meeting basic standards.

You can puzzle over lines all your life and never be satisfied with the meanings you get.

Art cannot save anybody from anything," wrote Gilbert Sorrentino

If I believe that art can, in fact, save us, over and over again, then does it follow that I risk the audacity of believing that you might be the very one who needs my words to save your life?

I was a mother, whereas he would have been a father, and whether those two labels SHOULD mean the same thing - to the culture, to the parent in question, to the children themselves - in practice they usually do not.

So many things, when you break them down, are about perception. So many things hinge on how we choose to interpret both our own choices and the immovable forces beyond our control. So much rests on having the wisdom, and sometimes the cold-edged fucking ruthlessness, to know the difference.

What's at the core of your desire to run a marathon? Couple this journey with value beyond miles. The meaning you ascribe to your effort crystalizes your motivation and fuels your commitment to stay the course and go the distance.

I tell it to you now to remind you the reason for stories in the first place. It is a way to pluck the loose stitching of a garment so capacious one cannot tell where the top is, where the bottom is. In this way our words take full sail and lift us to another time and place.

Los muertos eran respetables, pero los vivos valían un carajo.

Más terrible que morir es no saber para qué se vive.

Non entia sed entium (Não entidades, mas de entidades). Certamente, se parte das substâncias fossem aniquiladas, o mundo se tornaria vazio.