172 quotes found
“And people get all fouled up because they want the world to have meaning as if it were words... As if you had a meaning, as if you were a mere word, as if you were something that could be looked up...”
“Silence is of different kinds, and breathes different meanings.”
“Sometimes when I watch my dog, I think about how good life can be, if we only lose ourselves in our stories. Lucy doesn't read self-help books about how to be a dog; she just IS a dog. All she want...”
“If everyone knew exactly what I was going to say, then there would be no point in my saying it, would there?”
“There's no requirement that jobs be meaningful. If there was, half the country would be unemployed.”
“What can a meaning outside my condition mean to me? I can understand only in human terms. What I touch, what resists me--that is what I understand. And these two certainties--my appetite for the ab...”
“The order that our mind imagines is like a net, or like a ladder, built to attain something. But afterward you must throw the ladder away, because you discover that, even if it was useful, it was m...”
“Things separate from their stories have no meaning. They are only shapes. Of a certain size and color. A certain weight. When their meaning has become lost to us they no longer have even a name. Th...”
“Words can be meaningless. If they are used in such a way that no sharp conclusions can be drawn.”
“You could try making sense out of the universe, but you were too small and the parts you needed to see were too large or even smaller.”
“I take a picture, but it's not about who is in the picture or the background of it. It's about the memories and meanings it holds.”
“When a man does a queer thing, or two queer things, there may be a meaning to it, but when everything he does is queer, then you begin to wonder”
“Meaning is produced not only by the relationship between the signifier and the signified but also, crucially, by the position of the signifiers in relation to other signifiers.”
“We ascribe meanings because it is our nature to do so..We can no more see a thing without searching for a meaning than we can see a snag in a robe without pulling on the loose thread.”
“I thought that the world was a vast system of signs, a conversation between giant beings. My actions, the cricket's saw, the star's blink, were nothing but pauses and syllables, scattered phrases f...”
“Where you read a book and when and with whom can make a big difference.”
“The question was whether an ape which was being used to develop a poliomyelitis serum, and for this reason punctured again and again, would ever be able to grasp the meaning of its suffering. Unani...”
“I have tried to express the idea that the caf is a place where one can ruin oneself, go mad, or commit a crime.”
“Find what is meaningful to you and stand by it. Even if you begin to wonder if there is any meaning to anything, continue to be yourself.”
“What's in a name?”
