Quotes About Meaning

The more specific we are, the more universal something can become. Life is in the details. If you generalize, it doesn't resonate. The specificity of it is what resonates.

If particulars are to have meaning, there must be universals.

The Souvenir is an incredibly specific story, but people recognise the universal in it. Because, that's how stories work.

Mysticism is the mistake of an accidental and individual symbol for an universal one.

There are some concerns that are universal. Everyone wants to be loved, and everyone wants to feel like they belong somewhere in the world. Everyone wants to do something and feel like they have a sense of purpose. These are just the things that I think about and the things that make their way into my songwriting.

The more uncompromisingly specific you are the more you end up touching the bigger universal truths.

When I speak of artistic universals, I am not denying the enormous role played by culture. Obviously culture plays a tremendous role, otherwise you wouldn't have different artistic styles - but it doesn't follow that art is completely idiosyncratic and arbitrary, either, or that there are no universal laws.

I like films that deal with some of those questions that you can never answer: 'Why are we here? What's it about? What happens to us with the choices that we make? What are the ramifications for doing something right, or doing something wrong?' Those universal questions, I enjoy.

However you define God, and whether you believe in God or not, the world we live in has been shaped by the universal human conviction that there is more to life than life itself; that there is a 'god' shaped hole at the centre of our universe.

The slogan 'Never Again!' that emerged after the Holocaust implies that the Holocaust has a universal moral meaning, which, if properly learned, can provide at least a theoretical prophylactic against its repetition against anyone.

I believe that it is important to have faith in a cosmic, universal power and identify the reasons for one's existence.

People are drawn to the spiritual. It has a universal appeal.

I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal.

The subjectivization of the universal in art brings the universal downward on one hand, while on the other it helps raise the individual toward the universal.

The power of literature does not lie in resonance with the particular but the way that the particular speaks to a broader, more universal truth.

You know, there's a saying in art that in order to be universal you must be specific. So I think every artist feels that he is dealing with specific things but that it also has significance universally.

I believe nothing happens by mistake. You know, the universe has a divine plan. That sounds dramatic.

What does it matter how many lovers you have if none of them gives you the universe?

The universe may have a purpose, but nothing we know suggests that, if so, this purpose has any similarity to ours.

Everything in the universe has a purpose. Indeed, the invisible intelligence that flows through everything in a purposeful fashion is also flowing through you.

Every kid goes to school full of questions about meaning. You know, 'What's my place in the universe? What does it mean to be a human being? What are human beings?' Existing courses cannot help you answer those questions. They can't even help you ask them.

The function of the artist in a disturbed society is to give awareness of the universe, to ask the right questions, and to elevate the mind.

Whatever universe a professor believes in must at any rate be a universe that lends itself to lengthy discourse. A universe definable in two sentences is something for which the professorial intellect has no use. No faith in anything of that cheap kind!

The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless.