Quotes About Meaning

Plot happens outside but story happens inside. Readers won't get the true story, though, unless you put it on the page--both the big meaning in small events, and the overlooked implications of large plot turns.

We are surrounded by symbols and take them for granted. They had to start somewhere, though, and gained their meaning because of historical use, which is suggestive for fiction writers. Anything can be turned into a symbol.

It might seem that you shouldn't worry about what readers feel they're either going to feel what you want them to feel or not. But that way of thinking surrenders too much to chance. It leads to the erroneous idea that emotional effect is accidental. While it's true that you cannot control what each reader will feel while reading your work, what you can control is whether they will feel something in the first place and how strong those feelings will be.

a true magician always knows the exact meaning of every word and action of a ritual.

It occurs to me it is not so much the aim of the devil to lure me with evil as it is to preoccupy me with the meaningless.

And once you live a good story, you get a taste for a kind of meaning in life, and you can't go back to being normal; you can't go back to meaningless scenes stitched together by the forgettable thread of wasted time.

Vico's terminology follows the principle of his oration Study Methods: to balance the moderns against the ancients. The reader is asked to have Joyce's ''two thinks at a time'' (FW 583.7), to move between the modern and Vico's meaning. Vico does not simply replace modern meanings with his own original ones. He repeatedly faces the reader with both.

It could be said that one of the marks of a truly responsible life is a voluntary death

Without absorption of the water of God's Word, there's no quenching our spiritual thirst. Meditation is the means of absorption.

Cuando oras la Biblia, no solo estás orando palabras ordinarias; estás orando palabras que son espíritu y son vida.

The word discipline has disappeared from our minds, our mouths, our pulpits, and our culture. We hardly know what discipline means in modern American society. And yet, there is no other way to attain godliness; discipline is the path to godliness. JAY ADAMS

Without a clear biblical purpose, fasting becomes an end in itself.

One prayer does not a prayer life make. Prayers without variety eventually become words without meaning. Jesus said that to pray this way is to pray in vain, for in the Sermon on the Mount he warned, "When you pray, do not heap up empty phrases as the Gentiles do, for they think that they will be heard for their many words" (Matt. 6:7).

The text of the Bible means what God inspired it to mean, not "what it means to

Since the object of our worship is the glorious and majestic God of heaven, when worship becomes empty, the problem lies somewhere with the subject (us), not the object (God).

Less is more" was one of Meisner's mantras. "Silence has myriad meanings. In the theater, silence is an absence of words, but never an absence of meaning." Most of all, Meisner urged his students to think of acting a role as "living truthfully under given imaginary circumstances.

As Marion Montgomery, summarizing Etienne Gilson, puts it, "We know, and know that we know, that life and meaning have real existence, though science cannot substantiate that reality because the reality at issue lies in a dimension of immateriality."4

Pay Attention to What Is Important, Not Just What Is Quantifiable

I devised a list of things I needed to accomplish, all of them related to the Survival Kit and my mother. I was no longer going in any particular order or interpreting my tasks so literally and narrowly. They took on a life of their own, a life that I was giving them now.

What makes you think I didn't really mean no?" "Well, for one, you're awfully worked up over the guy. In that she-doth-protest-too-much kind of way.

A friend knows the song in my heart and sings it to me when my memory fails.

Caring too much for objects can destroy you. Only—if you care for a thing enough, it takes on a life of its own, doesn't it? And isn't the whole point of things—beautiful things—that they connect you to some larger beauty?

if a painting really works down in your heart and changes the way you see, and think, and feel, you don't think, 'oh, I love this picture because it's universal.' 'I love this painting because it speaks to all mankind.' That's not the reason anyone loves a piece of art. It's a secret whisper from an alleyway. Psst, you. Hey kid. Yes you.

Everybody wants to know why we're here, so we search for that answer. We want to know who we belong to so we search for those people and all the while God is whispering, 'Here I am.