Quotes About Meaning

So it doesn't have to be happy music to be inspiring.

Facing my own death brought an instant sense of clarity and purpose.

It's an important lesson Dad instilled in me, the idea that we have the freedom to serve, and that the choice to serve can define the type of life you live.

Some instinct - and I think it was a correct one - led me to do something difficult enough to give my life meaning.

I can create institutions, but I can't rewrite the chips in people's heads.

We engage in the public institutions of work and school and club and team, because it is there that we find meaning and purpose. But sometimes when we engage, we find confrontation not affirmation.

What is certain is that singing is not merely modulating a song by means of the voice: we sing and we celebrate the beauty that we can grow and live every day. If you want to sing and give emotions to those who are listening, you must have something to tell through your singing; you have to use singing like an instrument to tell something.

What greater insult can you give God than to take your own life?

I am an atheist and do not know the meaning of the 'religious pain' that is felt by believers of every cast when what they believe in is insulted.

To say 'we' and mean 'I' is one of the most recondite insults.

Art is an attempt to integrate evil.

Congruence, integration, responsibility and integrity are the values that I stand for.

Making a film confusing does not make it intelligent.

Intelligent design itself does not have any content.

What does it mean to be human, and what is at the human heart, and is there a soul, or is that all there is? Can an artificial being be intelligent? Is 'intelligent' the definition of humanity, or is it something deeper?

One thing you can't intend is how you will be read. I hear it said a lot that my books are about the 'search for identity', and this is said admiringly, as if I meant to encourage such a search.

In poetry, everything can be faked but the intensity of utterance.

The way I look at it is that once you create a piece of art, and it's out in the world, there's nothing you can do about it. People can use it the way they want to. There's nothing you can do about it. All you can hope for is that people that are using it are using it with the best intent.

A gift consists not in what is done or given, but in the intention of the giver or doer.

Every frame and every scene has to have an intention.

All that counts in life is intention.

I've never written a book with the intention of winning someone back or getting back at someone or anything like that. It's always just been about thinking about life and how relationships fit in to what life means.

My intention... isn't to create controversy.

So much of my intention with songs is to voice a continual dissatisfaction, or at least to claw my way out of it.