Quotes About Meaning

I let people fill in the blanks on their own. If they want to think about their ex, that's fine. If they want to think about maybe who one of my exes is, then that's fine. And it might not be right, because I'm the only one who knows what these songs are really about. It's the one shred of privacy I have in the matter.

Privacy has become the most precious thing. Things have got more cryptic in my writing.

Being a parent has been such a wonderful privilege for me. My kids make me laugh and cry, but there are definitely more laughs. They really do give my life meaning.

I believe that art elevates humanity. I feel incredibly privileged to be part of that.

I feel like I'm in a privileged position where I get to meet people and talk to them about the most important things in their lives. I appreciate that trust they're putting in me.

Prize lists are out, and you're not on them? Nature of the world - means nothing. Prizes are a lottery.

I can think of nothing that an audience won't understand. The only problem is to interest them; once they are interested, they understand anything in the world.

I study religion because I find it fascinating and problematic. But I struggle with the idea of what religion is, what being religious means. A lot of people assume that if you write about early Christianity, you must be some kind of Sunday-school teacher.

The ambivalence of writing is such that it can be considered both an act and an interpretive process that follows after an act with which it cannot coincide. As such, it both affirms and denies its own nature.

I mean, artistic processes are all about making choices all the time, and the very act of making a choice is the distilling down and the getting to the core of what it is that you care about and what you want to say, really.

There has always been a hermeneutic problem in Christianity because Christianity proceeds from a proclamation.

It's through engagement with the world, and not separation from it, that something with meaning gets produced.

Whether you're an actor, producer, writer, or director, it's all about the story you're going to tell.

I'm trying to stay humble because if I don't keep producing results, all of this goes away, so I want to focus on the people close to me - my family and my team; they mean everything to me.

People are hungry for community. They're hungry for meaning in a society that is oriented around the production and consumption of consumer goods.

If I'm not moved by what happens at the end of this play, then I've completely failed, and so has the play, and so has our production. And if that's the case then there really isn't any reason to want to do it.

The goal is to live a full, productive life even with all that ambiguity. No matter what happens, whether the cancer never flares up again or whether you die, the important thing is that the days that you have had you will have lived.

My response, a dubious and hesitant one, is that it has been and may continue to be, in the time that is left to me, more productive to live out the question than to try to answer it in abstract terms.

Me personally - not something to do with NASA - I do think there is a God, and it's somebody looking out for us and trying to guide us to live a very happy, productive life. There is further meaning. That's just my thought.

I am devoted to my husband and son. I am devoted to the practices and rituals that imbue our lives with a sense of meaning and purpose, that help me to live my days in the most emotionally and intellectually productive manner. I am devoted to the idea of devotion itself.

It's productive and fun to try interpreting cave paintings, but ultimately, they can't teach us anything beyond what we imagine them to be.

I was born into a profession in which my love of words, chosen with care for their meaning and nuance, was extremely important, not only to me, but also to the people with whom I worked with.

You question, as anybody should, the overarching worth of your profession, right? So that's a question I've often asked myself.

There's nothing obvious or predictable in acting. That's what it means to be in this profession.