Quotes About Meaning

A book or a work of art--culture--cannot by itself change the world, but by asking questions that matter, it might attempt to be an act of articulation against violence, the brutal and the casual kinds. It might aspire to starting a conversation through which together we might find common meaning, and words that free.

Secondly, is there "something" to be defined or translated? Derrida resisted the suggestion that there is a concept of deconstruction, simply present to the word, outside of the word's inscription in sentences and phrases determined by the undecidables. There's no such concept simply to pass over into other words, other languages.

Love is the answer. The question is unimportant.

My name means 'Keeper of Secrets' in High Elven. Your name means "Trust" in the old dwarven language. So I will hold you to your name, young Khadgar. Young Trust.

It is a privilege to help children learn the true meaning of Christmas, which is gratitude to God for sending us his son Jesus, and gaining from that gratitude a sense of love and generosity of spirit toward others,

AI scientists tried to program computers to act like humans without first answering what intelligence is and what it means to understand. They left out the most important part of building intelligent machines, the intelligence! "Real intelligence" makes the point that before we attempt to build intelligent machines, we have to first understand how the brain thinks, and there is nothing artificial about that. Only then can we ask how we can build intelligent machines

it was the nature of being a person, and everything they did—every single thing, in school or at home, with others or alone, conscious or unconscious, meaningful or nonsensical, every single thing—was geared toward discovering what exactly it meant to be a person. The meaning would always elude them, because elusiveness was in fact its very heart.

I was trying to make art that my son could look on in the future and would realize I was thinking about him very much during these times... that he can look and see my dad's thinking about me, but to also embed in these things something that is bigger than all of us.

I used to think of them as prolegomena for a book; now I would see a book as prolegomena for the notes.

two critical areas of life, everyday happiness and long-term impact,

One of the most compelling, universal human drives is the desire to feel that we make a difference—that because we were here, the world is a better place. Human beings are social animals, and there's something hardwired into us that needs to know that we've had an impact on the world.

Right now you should stop whatever you're doing and say this out loud: Stories get their name from how they're supposed to be used, not from what you're trying to write down.

Stories get their name from how they should be used, not what should be written.

Stories get their name not from how they're supposed to be written, but from how they're supposed to be used.

Like a beautiful brightly colored flower without fragrance Is the well-spoken word without action. Like a beautiful brightly colored flower full of fragrance Is the well-spoken word and the deed that matches the word. DHAMMAPADA 51-52

I didn't do anything to you." "You're right. You didn't. And if I kept shouting 'Revenge!' the whole time I was cutting you, that argument would have some substance. But since I've given no indication that my actions are vengeance-based, it was a pointless thing to say.

I've been obsessed with seeing life through music. My records, my relationship with records, my relationship with rock stars, everything that surrounds it, has been really one of the only ways that I ever started to understand the world.

Melody is king. Songs are ruled by melody. I believe that melody, more than lyrics, is what does all the heavy lifting emotionally. When I write lyrics, or when I adapt a poem to a song, my goal is to interfere as little as possible with whatever spell is being cast by the melody. At the same time, I hope, at best, that the words enhance the song somehow, add meaning or clarify and underline what the melody is making me feel.

I find it's almost impossible to put two words together and not find at least some meaning. We're conditioned to look for patterns and identify mysteries to solve much more than we are designed to dictate what we're searching for. I recommend allowing that natural curiosity and our sense-making brains to do their thing.

showing up with a reliably open heart and a will to share whatever spirit you can muster is what resonates and transcends technical perfection.

What you make of the song or what the world will make of it is of little concern when contrasted with the joy that I've talked about many times now—the joy of disappearing long enough to find something you didn't know you had inside you.

But what if you discover that the price of purpose is to render invisible so many other things?

I'm not an answer," she said. "I'm a question." She might also be a message incarnate, a signal in the flesh, even if she hadn't yet figured out what story she was supposed to tell.

What is too much to bear? Not being alive is too much to bear.