Quotes About Meaning

I need to have a reason why I'm doing something. Otherwise I'm lost.

What can I know? What ought I to do? What can I hope?

A great interpreter of life ought not himself to need interpretation.

I look at the story, I look at the idea and just try to think of it in terms of that whole body of myth and see where the characters fit in and what they ought to be doing-all those archetypes are there to play with.

The fact that we die is one of the more interesting things that happen to us. Fiction ought to be about bottom lines, and that's as bottom-line as you can get.

I never really understood the idea that nonfiction ought to be this dispensary of data that we have at the moment.

We shall all die, and our lives will be irrelevant then.

I think we all want to know that if our lives don't turn out the way we imagine, there's still a purpose.

If life only has the meaning you bring to it, we have the opportunity to bring rich meaning to our lives by the service we do for others.

The epic implications of being human end in more than this: We start our lives as if they were momentous stories, with a beginning, a middle and an appropriate end, only to find that they are mostly middles.

Even in this glowering age, morality animates our lives with meaning.

All of us want to have meaning in our lives and want to feel like we're doing something that makes a difference. I believe we're doing that in the Justice Department.

The one kind of person I have a lot of trouble understanding is the kind of person that says the existence of God or religion doesn't matter, it's not an important decision. I think it's vitally important; it's what all our lives are based on.

Most great plays of the past lose their grip on immediacy; on application to our lives right now.

What is our destiny? Does it matter? Is it bound up with 'our' planet? In my opinion, yes.

In our world, we have this huge focus on vicarious living - politicians, movie stars, athletes, coaches, all these people. What our research has shown very clearly is that people who are really happier and have more meaningful lives are people that focus on living their own lives.

Ours is the job of interpreting the Constitution. And that document isn't some inkblot on which litigants may project their hopes and dreams.

Ours was a never a 'religious' religious home because my parents thought of religion as something you do: it's the way you engage in the local community. That has meant a lot to me.

I think essentially the meaning of life is probably the journey and not really any one thing or an outcome or a result. I think it's kinda the process and I think that if you can find happiness in the process then maybe that's it.

If you write great songs with meaning and emotion, they will last for ever because songs are the key to everything. Songs will outlast the artist and they will go on for ever if they are good.

That's the bulk of my lyrical output - being confused and trying to find answers to my confusion.

Some of the songs on the radio are really outrageous. I listen to the lyric. If the lyric doesn't make sense, I don't like the song.

The drawing and the crafting of the story are fun, but it's the overall meaning that matters to me. It might escape some people who just want to read a comic, and that's fine. The overall meaning is what matters.

The great lesson I get from 'Moby-Dick' is that when the times are bad, when there is great foreboding, there are still ways to go about living. It's through Ishmael that I find a kind of overall cosmic approach to a meaningful life in this meaningless world.