Quotes About Meaning

As a storyteller, you have to have something to say. You have to look at the world, think about it in relationship to yourself, and say, 'I think this is a pattern,' or 'I think this is the way fatherhood works,' or 'I think this is the way first love feels.' The danger in that is, that's when you open yourself up to real critique.

As a storyteller, dates and time equal context.

The old storytellers took the stories that meant something to them and rearranged the pieces to say something.

We are the storytelling animal.

Storytelling is essentially what we do.

Well, if storytelling is important, then your narrative ability, or your ability to put into words or use what someone else has put into words effectively, is important too.

Storytelling is what lights my fire.

Storytelling is the important thing.

As long as your storytelling and emotional depth are intact, that's what people will focus on.

Audiences still crave storytelling.

I loved the idea of dramatic art of storytelling as a way to make sense of things. It's really what I love and what I care about.

Storytelling is my true passion.

Image-making, along with storytelling and music, is the stuff that culture is made out of.

I don't consider what I do 'art.' It's 'storytelling.'

For me, my brand is good storytelling.

If you can connect with the audience emotionally, that's potent storytelling.

I was born into a religious cult in Indianapolis, straight up. They had an apartment complex in this one area, and there were all these rules. My parents met through church and got married really shortly after, when they were both searching for connection and meaning, just like everyone is when they're 20.

Fatherhood made everything more straightforward. I was relieved that no longer did I have to agonise over what meaning I had in my life.

Writers who have nothing to say always strain for metaphors to say it in.

For every Book of Job, there's a Book of Leviticus, featuring some of the most boring prose ever written. But if you were stranded on a desert island, what book would better reward long study? And has there ever been a more beautiful distillation of existential philosophy than the Book of Ecclesiastes?

I think that half of us feel fraudulent in our lives anyway. There's that strange disconnect of not really knowing what we're doing sometimes, or why it matters. It's our existential crisis.

Life, to me, doesn't feel like a straightforward story; it doesn't make sense for me to get up there and just tell a story. Life feels like what my show feels like: chaotic and strange and disconnected.

My most cryptic, strange songs might be my most personal, but that isn't how people are going to receive them, because they don't know the code.

I've thought a lot about success, because it's very strange to me that I've been successful.