Quotes About Meaning

I just think lots of words have physicality. How about the word 'wobble?' You think that's arbitrary? When you say the word 'wince,' you wince. How about that?

But in due course it became evident that not only a physical situation qua physics, but the meaning of that situation to people, was sometimes a factor, through the behavior of people, in the start of a fire.

In literature classes, you don't learn about genes; in physics classes you don't learn about human evolution. So you get a fragmented view of the world. That makes it hard to find meaning in education.

I think that the cinema is a physical thing. What I'm looking for is creating a physical shock with the audience. I don't care of the meaning. I don't care of the idea. I don't want to say something. I want to make a 'shock physique.'

At the end of my life, is it better to say that I empowered people to make great stuff, or that I died with a net worth of $10 billion? Obviously I'm picking the former, although I would not mind both.

I guess I'm the happiest when I'm picking up my kids from school. The most important things on my list are my wife and kids and my health. Happiness is having a family you love.

Everyone is of course free to interpret the work in his own way. I think seeing a picture is one thing and interpreting it is another.

Since the model he so faithfully copies is not going to be hung up next to the picture... it is of no interest whether it is an accurate copy of the model.

This would be a distortion of their meaning, since the pictures are intimate and intense, and are the opposite of what is decorative; and have been painted in a scale of normal living rather than an institutional scale.

The reason I call my book 'Irreverent' is because there were a lot of pictures that were very irreverent. Maybe I could call my book 'Forgiving' because maybe I made a lot of errors, too.

When people ask what 'American Pie' is about, they're missing the point. The song isn't about the lines themselves - it's about what is between the lines. The song is about what isn't there.

There's something that happens with the collection of a large amount of data when it's dumped into an Excel spreadsheet or put into a pie chart. You run the risk of completely missing what it's about.

A book is like a piece of rope; it takes on meaning only in connection with the things it holds together.

I don't make notes for myself because I either lose them or they make no sense to me at all. I once found a piece of paper with the note: 'everything.' Apparently I made a note to myself not to forget everything!

For a country is not merely a piece of earth; it is, above all, a compendium of social, cultural, and historical factors which begin to acquire sense and order through the process of writing.

After all, the work isn't the point; the piece is.

I think we're very much in a mystery here in this life and that artists try to pierce the mystery with their art.

If your church is the theatre, New York means a lot - it's a pilgrimage you want to make.

I think pink is one of the saddest colors in the world, and many American humans are taught not to take anything pink seriously, which is weird.

I don't think that word - the word pirate - has any real meaning. Or it's something that's had meaning imposed on it.

I think there were early critics who wanted us to change the world because the Sex Pistols failed.

The pitch is the most beautiful part of the game; it gives you emotions which bring meaning to life.

I think that rather than saying that Occupy Wall Street has died, we can say that they're in the process of understanding what the long march through alternative institutions might mean.

I like artists who have something to say, not wallpaper.