Quotes About Significance

It is only in our decisions that we are important.

Dad used to say a story was worth writing if it made a difference to even one person. in Paper Daughter

Names are still magic; even Sharon, Karen, Darren, and Warren are magic to somebody somewhere. In fairy stories, naming is knowledge. When I know your name, I can call your name, and when I call your name, you'll come to me.

Don't you think it's strange that life, described as so rich and full, a camel-trail of adventure, should shrink to this coin-sized world? A head on one side, a story on the other. Someone you loved and what happened. That's all there is when you dig in your pockets. The most significant thing is someone else's face. What else is embossed on your hands but her?

She looked at me. There was a second the kind that holds the whole world ...

I'm not against anyone fastening their life to an event of some significance and that way making themselves significant. God knows, we need what footholds we can find on the glass mountain of our existence. Trouble is, you climb and climb, and around middle age, you discover you have spent all the time in the same spot. You thought you were going to be somebody until you slip down into the nobody that you are. I'm telling you because I know.

I will set you in the sky and name you. I will hide you in the earth like treasure.

To do something large and to do it well demands such observances, personal and peculiar, laughable as they often are, because they stave off that dinginess of soul that says that everything is small and grubby and nothing is really worth the effort.

Lo que arriesgas revela cuánto vales.

I looked back at you. These moments that are talismans and treasure

The wind blew and it didn't seem important, but tomorrow when the wind blew, it would be important. All the familiar things were getting different meanings.

got a sense early on that the power of a text is not time-bound. The words go on doing their work.

All these words, written so long ago, seemed to say to her, Remember us. We were here. We were real.

Dad was a philosopher and had what he called his Theory of Purpose, which held that everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time.

Everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time.

Anyone who thinks he's too small to make a difference has never been bit by a mosquito, I'd tell people.

Dad was a philosopher and had what he called his Theory of Purpose, which held that everything in life had a purpose, and unless it achieved that purpose, it was just taking up space on the planet and wasting everybody's time. That

Something begins in order to end: an adventure doesn't let itself be extended it achieves significance only through its death.

I glance around the room. What a comedy! All these people sitting there, looking serious, eating. No, they aren't eating: they are recuperating in order to successfully finish their tasks. Each one of them has his little personal difficulty which keeps him from noticing that he exists; there isn't one of them who doesn't believe himself indispensable to something or someone.

The existentialist cannot accept that man can be helped by any sign on earth, for he will interpret the sign as he chooses.

Sometimes your personal life is much more significant. Sometimes your work life is more significant. Friends and family, or sometimes the general population, take precedence.

Of course it's difficult to top a box office success like Emmanuelle, so it will always be my most important work. But that's nothing to be ashamed of.

It is, perhaps more than anything else, the arrest of time which has taken place in a completed work of art that gives certain plays their feeling of depth and significance.

You must bring out of each word its practical cash-value, set it at work within the stream of your experience.