Quotes About Meaning

I am not interested in political writing, because it's limited in its scope. I try to write general, human kinds of songs, which suggest more than they explain. You can take a lot of different meanings, but hopefully everyone feels some kind of recognition.

Character and story are suggested by the voice in the words themselves.

Everyone who means well gives advice based on his or her perception. I have realized that while it's important to hear the suggestions, one should only listen to oneself.

We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.

The counterpart of the suicide is the seeker; but the difference between them is slight.

Seppuku is Japanese for ritual suicide. I thought, What a cute name for a coat.

Everything important that I have done can be put into a little suitcase.

To help, to continually help and share, that is the sum of all knowledge; that is the meaning of art.

What is taken away is greater than the sum of what was there. This may not be mathematically possible; but it is emotionally possible.

It will always be the same possibilities, in sum or on the average, that go on repeating themselves until a man comes along who does not value the actuality above idea. It is he who first gives the new possibilities their meaning, their direction, and he awakens them.

Try this experiment: Pick a famous movie - 'Casablanca,' say - and summarize the plot in one sentence. Is that plot you just described the thing you remember most about it? Doubtful. Narrative is a necessary cement, but it disappears from memory.

Writing and creating, those things come to me on their own. I feel like... you sort of summon them and it's like allowing the universe to enter your heart in an entirely different way to what it normally does. It's like inviting that energy of the universe to enter into your craft in a way where it has a meaning.

There's something called religion, and it was invented a long time ago by people who felt very out of control with their lives, who didn't know... why the sun always rose over the mountains.

My name, Solange, means 'Angel of the sun,' and I'm completely enamored of my African history. The culture is so expressive.

For me, Memphis has always been a city that holds a great deal of meaning and also leads me to a lot of thinking. Besides Sun Studio, which helped put rock n' roll on the map all over the world, the legendary Stax Studio also called Memphis home.

Again, I say I will be glad to tell what songs I have ever sung, because singing is my business.

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair.

My name means 'sunrise of life.'

I always associate blonde with sunshine and puppies and happiness, but I don't think sexiness.

I'd have to say that my favorite kind of film is serious comedy. Comedy with serious underpinning. 'Little Miss Sunshine' is like that. That's my fave genre, if I had to pick one.

Any type of animation, it could be really super crude or very sophisticated, it doesn't mean anything if we don't make this point in this shot, this one here and this one here. There's the saying, 'One shot, one thought.' It's pretty much a true way to go.

There is this looking at the world as shapes and patterns and colors that have meaning, and you can't deny the superficial because the superficial is what meets the eye.

Photography does deal with 'truth' or a kind of superficial reality better than any of the other arts, but it never questions the nature of reality - it simply reproduces reality. And what good is that when the things of real value in life are invisible?

Art is a mind-game that we do to make our lives easier. If it isn't for that, it becomes superfluous.