Quotes About Meaning

Between thought and spoken word is a gap where intention can enter, the symbol be twisted aside, and the lie come to be.

To leave the reader free to decide what your work means, that's the real art; it makes the work inexhaustible.

I talk about the gods, I am an atheist. But I am an artist too, and therefore a liar. Distrust everything I say. I am telling the truth.

Things don't have purposes, as if the universe were a machine, where every part has a useful function. What's the function of a galaxy? I don't know if our life has a purpose and I don't see that it matters. What does matter is that we're a part. Like a thread in a cloth or a grass-blade in a field. It is and we are. What we do is like wind blowing on the grass.

The classical scholars have kept alive the tradition of the superiority of the ancient languages -- a kaleidoscopic mass of suffixes and prefixes, supposed to represent an infinite shading of meaning. It is a character they share with the Ojibway and the Zulu.

Like storytelling, that incessant loving rush of explaining and repositioning and telling again, all for the sake of finding something shared, something mutually recognized -- so interpreting seemed to me. It seemed a kind of goodness.

I have been too fond of stories.

Food and shelter are very nice, but without stories to hear and tell, we might as well be the walking dead.

How eagerly the words spring into shape, winding themselves around a rigid latticework of meaning like the curling tendrils of ivy that crisscross my window. The skeletal branches, whose intricate fretwork clings to the screen, hold tight against a lashing wind and pelting rain.

It was the tiniest scrap of misinformation, insignificant really. But. . . . That was not the story at all.

But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation.

But I believe life is an intelligent thing—that things aren't random.

We want to see that the birth of Jesus Christ was not just a one-time event worthy of celebrating.  It is a one-time event that made us worthy.  Worthy to have a direct relationship with God, our Father.  Worthy of living a life with purpose and meaning.  Worthy of all of the good God has in store for those who love Him. 

There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally. As nearly as we can, we must put ourselves in the place of those who uttered the words, and try to divine how they would have dealt with the unforeseen situation; and, evidence of what they would have done, they are by no means final.

There is no surer way to misread any document than to read it literally. ... As nearly as we can, we must put ourselves in the place of those who uttered the words, and try to divine how they would have dealt with the unforeseen situation; and, although their words are by far the most decisive evidence of what they would have done, they are by no means final.

The word "religion" beautifully defines itself, of course. It translates "to bind" from the Latin--"re" means back and "ligare" means to tie up. All religions are straightjackets, jackets for the straight.

To describe externals, you become a scientist. To describe experience, you become an artist.

I wanted to scientize myth and mythologize science.

Dreams are life, real life, not simply reflections. Dreams are honest.

Do you have to feel something for it to be real or mean anything? Can you touch your dreams, taste your imagination.

The future and the past are equally meaningless because they are nebulous entities, times that do not exist, containing events which have no echo because they are gone, or which hold no import because they are yet to happen. What is important is the here and now, and now, and now, and the spaces between the nows.

Poetry is God's work.

He told me it didn't really matter if it was true, it was what the story MEANT that was so important.

I speak the Truth, that's who I am"...This phrase is often a declaration by some, a sign of strength, or integrity. But...There are truths about me that are none of your business. There are truths about you that are none of my business, either. If I were to use yours against you, or you use mine against me, we would indeed be speaking the truth, but it would not erase the hatred and meanness that also describes us. There is no strength in that. And there's sure no integrity in it either