A lot of the songs on '2' are pretty personal, but even if I'm writing about something like that, I still tend to keep it pretty simple and open-ended. I like the idea of people listening to my album and it meaning something to me but maybe meaning something else to them.
Only an artist can interpret the meaning of life.
In the biblical worldview, the purpose of all creation is to benefit man. This anthropocentric view of nature, and indeed of the whole universe, is completely at odds with the current secular idealization of nature. This secular view posits that nature has its own intrinsic meaning and purpose, independent of man.
Man is lost and is wandering in a jungle where real values have no meaning. Real values can have meaning to man only when he steps on to the spiritual path, a path where negative emotions have no use.
And just because God attains and wins and finds this uniqueness, all our lives win in our union with him the individuality which is essential to their true meaning.
The meaning of life is contained in every single expression of life. It is present in the infinity of forms and phenomena that exist in all of creation.
When I'm ready to make a photograph, I think I quite obviously see in my minds eye something that is not literally there in the true meaning of the word. I'm interested in something which is built up from within, rather than just extracted from without.
'Recluse' is a code word generated by journalists... meaning, 'doesn't like to talk to reporters.'
I've never been convinced that experience is linear, circular, or even random. It just is. I try to put it in some kind of order to extract meaning from it, to bring meaning to it.
Just doing a project because it's an opportunity won't create meaning. As an artist, I need something to communicate.
I turn my negatives into my positives because one of my mottos is, 'Yesterday's history, tomorrow's a mystery,' meaning that you can't go back and change anything in the past.
Truth is something which can't be told in a few words. Those who simplify the universe only reduce the expansion of its meaning.
As I aged and I got stronger artistically, I really started to value my voice in performance - my 'voice' meaning my body, my technique, and my style. Then I started to really feel that flower as well. That's when I started to feel like, 'Wow - now I understand what my beauty is.'
Art removes boundaries and makes the world brighter. It is the common language for people all over the world. But politics are the opposite completely. Politicians, their very meaning is based on the lines they draw.
The Jewish people and the Negro people both know the meaning of Nordic supremacy. We have both looked into the eyes of terror.
What humans want is not just happiness. They want justice; they want meaning.
When I was a kid, toe dancing and toe shoes had a meaning in our culture as a serious kind of art.
If you want to reach any kind of poignancy or meaning a lot of times, coming from comedy is the best way to get there.
There's all kinds of those moments in your life where either through a weird set of circumstances, or a song you hear, or a smell you smell, or one person says something totally out of the context without the meaning that you assigned to it, but you snap back to the way you were when you were 14 or 15. We all deal with that.
Why take notes? The obvious reason is to remember. Visual note-taking translates what we hear into pictures that give context, color, and meaning. By adding symbols, visual metaphors, likenesses of people, and room layouts, we add several dimensions.
Gay rights are not primarily marriage rights, and for the millions who live in unaccepting places with no resources, dignity remains elusive. I am lucky to have forged meaning and built identity, but that's still a rare privilege. And gay people deserve more, collectively, than the crumbs of justice.
For the most part, I think of PC as meaning Plain Civil. You treat people the way you'd like to be treated yourself, and that means not using language that is demeaning.
The simplest way to remove carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse gas, is to grow plants - preferably trees, since they tie up more of the gas in cellulose, meaning it will not return to the air within a season or two. Plants build themselves out of air and water, taking only a tiny fraction of their mass from the soil.
All roads for me lead back to Mozart. In his tragically short life, he breathed new life, fire and meaning into every form of music that existed in his time.
I'm not convinced about marriage. Divorce is so easy, and that fact that gay people are not allowed to marry takes much of the meaning out of it. Committing yourself to one person is sacred.
I love my ink. They all have a meaning. I'm very strong in my faith, so I wanted to have some religious images. I've got Pieta, a Michelangelo sculpture of Mary holding Jesus after he came off the cross, on my shoulder. A sacred heart on my arm. Musical notes because I love music. The compass on my chest is there because church is my compass.
In 'A Confession,' Tolstoy found meaning that he could hold on to, and he lived for another 30 years.
If there's a song that stops meaning anything to me, then I'll quit playing it.
All that passes is raised to the dignity of expression; all that happens is raised to the dignity of meaning. Everything is either symbol or parable.
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.
Modernity is a deal. The entire contract can be summarised in a single phrase: humans agree to give up meaning in exchange for power.
The modern world thinks of art as very important: something close to the meaning of life.
We want to help everyone find meaning in their life and help translate the story that each person actually matters in the world.
Go out there and see where the world needs your touch. That kind of meaning not only makes you feel more connected to your environment on a local scale, but also to yourself - whether you can operate from something beyond the definition that others might place on you.
Consciously or not, we are all on a quest for answers, trying to learn the lessons of life. We grapple with fear and guilt. We search for meaning, love, and power. We try to understand fear, loss, and time. We seek to discover who we are and how we can become truly happy.
When the shriveled skin of the ordinary is stuffed out with meaning, it satisfies the senses amazingly.
