The longer I live, the more I feel that true repose consists in 'renouncing' one's own self, by which I mean making up one's mind to admit that there is no importance whatever in being 'happy' or 'unhappy' in the usual meaning of the words.
Apple, iTunes, and streaming services have made the single a more easy thing to access. What that's done has made the album as a collection of songs almost meaningless. But an album that has a concept or story or reason to be an album, if anything, has more meaning now than it ever has.
Well-being cannot exist just in your own head. Well-being is a combination of feeling good as well as actually having meaning, good relationships and accomplishment.
Any observations from the Moon or a sense of realising this or that about the greater meaning of things wasn't as influential for me as the experience of coming back and dealing with being a person who's been to the Moon.
I'm not interested in gothic storytelling or the horrific for its own sake. I'm always interested in it as a way of getting at larger ideas or important meaning. And you don't see that as much as you'd think in the history of horror cinema. A lot of times, it's scariness for scariness' own sake.
I have spent every New Year's Eve since 1992 in Lourdes. I spend the hour of my birth every year in the grotto. It's a place with meaning for me.
Go and experience life the way that someone else might experience it. Maybe you'll find meaning in a different corner of your brain. The fact that it changed doesn't negate the fact that it ever mattered.
To me, what I'm interested in, in the end, is the meaning of food in our lives.
Cinema for me only has meaning when it has a relationship with what I see outside on the street.
All records are riddles, and whatever you may want people to think it's about, it may just be throwing them off. And you don't want it to get in the way of what someone else's understanding is. It's not really about anything. At the same time, it will find some meaning.
I was drawn to biology and history and, of course, art. And I loved languages. The biggest problem I had is that I wasn't taught about the connections between all these things. I think that would have given life a lot more meaning and it would be a lot more enjoyable.
By living so long, the supercentenarian earns the prefixal 'super' and becomes a person suddenly freighted with power and meaning. He's Gandalf, Yoda, the Ancient Mariner, perhaps with some otherworldly insight. He's lived so long that, in fact, he's living the afterlife to his own initial life.
In a certain way, it's the sound of the words, the inflection and the way the song is sung and the way it fits the melody and the way the syllables are on the tongue that has as much of the meaning as the actual, literal words.
Most of the names in my books have secondary meaning. Sometimes they foreshadow; sometimes they tell you about the character's origin or back story.
I adore themes of hope and courage and the ways we find meaning through suffering.
Don't throw petals on the floor if they have no meaning. I would rather have a fun, casual relationship than have someone pretending they're completely in love with me.
Caesar was a man of great common sense and good taste, meaning thereby a man without originality or moral courage.
I was born on TV, meaning that's where I caught my break. So that's where I always have to be smart and revisit that medium as much as I can.
If the rules of a language are followed, words usually make sense. But these very rules can stir the impulse to rebel. We're obliged to keep trying to convey meaning through correct sentences. After a while, the good-soldier rigidity of polished prose can begin to seem dull, and it gets harder to resist the temptation of nonsense.
'Negative liberty' is a political science term meaning a liberty from government action. It is not a liberty to anything - like the liberty to meaningfully contribute to public debate or to have ample spaces for speech.
The physical world is not going away, just items take on different meaning. Paper takes on this archival, very important meaning now that it's not the only way to communicate something.
Poorly planned and stressful vacations eliminate the positive benefit of time away. The less the stress, the more likely you will experience a positive benefit from the time off. A positive, well-managed vacation can make you happier and less stressed, and you can return with more energy at work and with more meaning in your life.
I don't want to put meaning on what I do because I don't know what it is.
I dream in numbers, and I like to look up the meaning of numbers, and numbers stick out to me.
In 1979, postmodernism lost its understanding of the meaning of ornament. It degenerated into kitsch applique.
The question is not, will there be difficulties and threats to our existence, but how will we deal with them and what can we learn from them. How can they become blessings to society, as a life threatening disease is to an individual, by teaching us about the meaning of our life and existence?
Learning great works like the Liszt Sonata or Beethoven's 'Hammerklavier' should be a struggle to a certain extent, where you need to labor intensely with your own brain and soul for the meaning of the work instead of cutting and pasting a bunch of stuff together from the Internet and - boom! - there you are with a performance ready to go.
Evolution isn't just a story about where we came from. It's an epic at the center of life itself. Far from robbing our lives of meaning, it instills an appreciation for the beautiful, enduring, and ultimately triumphant fabric of life that covers our planet. Understanding that doesn't demean human life - it enhances it.
I think things can have more than one meaning and still connect with people. There's a lot of meaning to the title 'Music For People' and they're all true and they're all accurate.
Around '62 in Baltimore, all the girls had those big hairdos. And then suddenly, a few of the really hip ones started doing their hair straight. And people panicked. And it was called going 'Joe,' meaning Joe College. And people would say, 'I don't know. Should I be 'Joe'? I can't decide.'
It would be fantastic to spend your whole life trying to pursue something and then finally, at the last moment, you achieve it. You know, instead of getting it in the middle of the pursuit and spending the second half giving it meaning.
If we say the purpose of life is our children, that's neither a purpose nor a meaning. But I'm sure I will be as besotted as everybody else when I have them.
Writing and creating, those things come to me on their own. I feel like... you sort of summon them and it's like allowing the universe to enter your heart in an entirely different way to what it normally does. It's like inviting that energy of the universe to enter into your craft in a way where it has a meaning.
It is while you are patiently toiling at the little tasks of life that the meaning and shape of the great whole of life dawn on you.
I believe strongly in inspiration, inspiration literally meaning 'full of the spirit.' I do believe that it comes to you.
My films are like clouds: their meaning keeps changing every minute.
