Quotes About Meaning

It's very strange when people get so focused on what a song means, what actual events inspired a song. That gets people really excited for some reason... But that's what's great about music - however people interpret it, whatever they see, is what I want to be there for them.

Words are a strange thing. You once saw an animal and decided it's a 'cat.' But cat is a sound. This cat has nothing to do with the animal. But I have decided it's a cat. So a cat it is.

I know Nirvana's a strange thing. It means a lot of things to a lot of people.

My being a writer and playing Scrabble are connected. If I have a good writing day, I'll take a break and play online Scrabble. My favorite word as a child was 'carrion,' before I knew what it meant. I later created crossword puzzles, which was a lot about puns, and how words would create these strange, strange things.

When I was young I read 'L'Etranger' by Camus, and it made me aware of the strangeness of life.

'Carnival Row' is us looking at the stranger; 'The Curiosity' is the stranger looking at us.

I shall be glad when you have strangled the invincible respectability that dogs your steps.

There is much more to life than what gets measured in accounts. Even economists know that.

Not asking what a statistic actually means is a failure of empathy, too.

The facts miss the heart of the matter; to give us a clear picture, the facts need a vehicle, the anecdote

and a day spent working for money is wasted while a day spent writing poetry is wasted but more honest.

Death is nothing to us, since when we are, death has not come, and when death has come, we are not. Epicurus

I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is truer sometimes than happening-truth.

Well, right now I'm not dead. But when I am, it's like...I don't know, I guess it's like being inside a book that nobody's reading. [...] An old one. It's up on a library shelf, so you're safe and everything, but the book hasn't been checked out for a long, long time. All you can do is wait. Just hope somebody'll pick it up and start reading.

Words, too, have genuine substance — mass and weight and specific gravity.

And when Deirdre Bair went to interview Beckett for the biography the first thing he said was, 'So you've come to demonstrate that it was all, after all, autobiographical.

He would argue that every world and every life was insignificant when considered against the span of the infinite… but nothing mattered against the span of the infinite, so if you wanted to care about anything at all, you had to care about the small things.

Full value for your soul wouldn't get you a cup of coffee at a convenience store.

Words are instruments, they are tools that, in their different ways, are as effective as any sharp edge or violate chemical. They are, like coins, items of great value, but they represent a currency that, well spent, returns ever greater riches.

There's the theory that nudity doesn't really make something sexy the characters and their relationship make it sexy.

meaning is one of our greatest needs, and when it's fulfilled, we can endure any type of suffering with dignity.

RC blinked a couple more times and admired the freckles on either side of [Honey's] nose. He would have enjoyed connecting them dot-to-dot with a felt-tip pen. In his fantasy, he would discover the meaning of life spread across her cheekbones.

That's all any writing could ever be. Words on paper that burn intensely when read and then diminish over time.

It's more like I was daydreaming when the Supreme Being told me what I should do with my life, and it's too late to ask what it was.