Quotes About Meaning

It starts this way: The worth of a job is not defined by what it allows you to do when you're not working.

The work of art is brought into the world without there being a need for it. The house satisfies a requirement. The work of art is responsible to none; the house is responsible to everyone. The work of art wants to draw people out of their state of comfort.

But every historical statement and legitimization itself moves within a certain relation to history.

Everything we say has metamessages indicating how our words are to be interpreted: Is this a serious statement or a joke? Does it show annoyance or goodwill? Most of the time, metamessages are communicated and interpreted without notice because, as far as anyone can tell, the speaker and the hearer agree on their meaning.

Language is a mixture of statement and evocation.

Making something good and saying something brilliant are not two things. When you make your own statement, there is a higher energy level, and you do better painting.

This is the operative statement. The others are inoperative.

I think a painting should include more experience than simply intended statement.

The only reason for doing a play is to make a statement about it, and by that I don't mean a conceit of the producer.

Painting does more than just point to things. The very act of pointing is a value statement.

With a lot of songs, songs that don't make a good statement, I forget the words.

The most profound statements are often said in silence.

All my films are statements, especially when I write them.

When somebody says that all statements are false, the obvious problem is that as an assertion it's self-defeating.

I have made many serious statements - I just can't remember any of them. I guess they mustn't have been very important.

The impulse for me to want to make sculpture is because I want to make statements, really, on a purely emotional level. And it's also somewhat of a challenge to see how that can be done with materials and objects that really are not emotional, in and of themselves.

And for well over a hundred years our politicians, statesmen, and people remembered that this was a republic, not a democracy, and knew what they meant when they made that distinction.

I don't view my memory as accurate or static - and, in autobiographical fiction, my focus is still on creating an effect, not on documenting reality - so 'autobiographical,' to me, is closer in meaning to 'fiction' than 'autobiography.'

If you are actually ordinary, the only way to give royal status meaning is to live an extraordinary life. It can't be jeans and burgers and granny doing the babysitting.

If you're just saying, hey, I'm doing this. I'm working to make money. I'm working to increase my status. If that's all there is, I think you will find out that it's meaningless.

Since Plato, we have been considering the nature of knowledge, the meaning of meaning and the status of the physical world.

'Psych' is a cult show, and anytime a show takes on a cult status, it means that the fans are a huge part of it.

The decision in my case to become a stay-at-home dad, which people do all the time, I guess wouldn't have meant as much to people if I had had a very simple kind of make-a-living existence and decided I needed to spend more time at home.

What's the point of staying sober?