Quotes About Meaning

Where do you live? In the hearts of men, Sullivan said.

People getting older become more fond of objects. I think this is true. Particular things. A leather-bound book, a piece of furniture, a photograph, a painting, the frame that holds the painting. These things make the past seem permanent. A baseball signed by a famous player, long dead. A simple coffee mug. Things we trust. They tell an important story. A person's life, all those who entered and left, there's a depth, a richness.

What was there to say? It was a matter of silences, not words.

All this optimism, all this booming and soaring. Things happen like bang. This and that simultaneous. I put out my hand and what do I feel? I know there's a thousand things you analyze every ten minutes. Patterns, ratios, indexes, whole maps of information. I love information. This is our sweetness and light. It's a fuckall wonder. And we have meaning in the world. People eat and sleep in the shadow of what we do. But at the same time, what?

Our lives, examined carefully in all their affinities and links, abound with suggestive meaning, with themes and involute turnings we have not allowed ourselves to see completely.

Tutto dovrebbe essere qualcosa. Ma non lo è mai. È la natura dell'esistenza.

People say great art is immortal. I say there's something mortal in it. It carries a glimpse of death.

Tyle w nich by?o chrze?cija?stwa. I tak niewiele z Chrystusa.

He told me that I hadn't done anything yet. Hadn't lived yet. All you do is pass the time, he said.

I needed death in order to believe I was living, an atmosphere of death much more real and personal than anything the newspapers can offer.

I want to die and be finished forever. Don't you want to die?" he said. "I don't know." "What's the point of living if we don't die at the end of it?" In

He said, The word for moonlight is moonlight. This made her happy. It was logically complex and oddly moving and circularly beautiful and true - or maybe not so circular but straight as straight can be.

What's the point of waking up in the morning if you don't try to match the enormousness of the known forces in the world with something powerful in your own life?

What's the point in living if we don't die at the end of it?

Every lost moment is the life. It's unknowable, except to us, each of us inexpressibly...

The women kept washing floors. It seemed to be what they did in difficult times. Unvarying things, she saw, must have a deeper value than we know.

I'd been doing this for a while, attempting to define a word for an object or even a concept. Define loyalty, define truth. I had to stop before it killed me. The

A writer creates a character as a way to reveal consciousness, increase the flow of meaning. This is how we reply to power and beat back our fear.

Peace of mind, purpose, true fellowship.

The true life is not reducible to words spoken or written, not by anyone, ever. The true life takes place when we're alone, thinking, feeling, lost in memory, dreamingly self-aware, the submicroscopic moments.

If serious reading dwindles to near nothingness, it will probably mean that the thing we're talking about when we use the word "identity" has reached an end.

I think it's a mistake to lose one's sense of death, even one's fear of death. Isn't death the boundary we need? Doesn't it give a precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or limit." I

DEPARTMENT HEADS wear academic robes at the College-on-the-Hill. Not grand sweeping full-length affairs but sleeveless tunics puckered at the shoulders. I like the idea. I like clearing my arm from the folds of the garment to look at my watch. The simple act of checking the time is transformed by this flourish. Decorative gestures add romance to a life.

words stick even as lives fly apart.