As a novelist I mined my history my family and my memory but in a very specific way. Writing fiction I never made use of experiences immediately as they happened. I needed to let things fester in my memory mature and transmogrify into something meaningful.
To study history means submitting to chaos and nevertheless retaining faith in order and meaning.
Faith consists in being vitally concerned with that ultimate reality to which I give the symbolical name of God. Whoever reflects earnestly on the meaning of life is on the verge of an act of faith.
If there exists no possibility of failure then victory is meaningless.
Music and language are a vital element. We as actors and directors offer it to people who want to experience it. Sometimes the actual meaning is less important than the words themselves.
The greatest way for people to experience a comedy is to go in not knowing anything about it. But because of marketing it's impossible. Marketing meaning that in order to get people to come you can't just go 'Hey there's a great movie - we're not going to show you anything from it but trust us!'
To me the job of the artist is to provide a useful and intelligent vocabulary for the world to be able to articulate feelings they experience everyday and otherwise wouldn't have the means to express in a meaningful and useful way.
The crucial question one comes back to is the examination without that experience is meaningless. And I think it's true that society is becoming more and more passive less and less fired up with enthusiasm in many spheres.
The deeper the experience of an absence of meaning - in other words of absurdity - the more energetically meaning is sought.
The simple act of saying 'thank you' is a demonstration of gratitude in response to an experience that was meaningful to a customer or citizen.
Such happiness as life is capable of comes from the full participation of all our powers in the endeavor to wrest from each changing situations of experience its own full and unique meaning.
The word experience is like a shrapnel shell and bursts into a thousand meanings.
Sex without love is a meaningless experience but as far as meaningless experiences go its pretty damn good.
Beliefs have the power to create and the power to destroy. Human beings have the awesome ability to take any experience of their lives and create a meaning that disempowers them or one that can literally save their lives.
I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive.
There are many truths of which the full meaning cannot be realized until personal experience has brought it home.
The right to a quality education is I believe the perfect path to bridge the gap between different cultures and to reconcile various civilizations. Without such a right the values of liberty justice and equality will have no meaning. Ignorance is by far the biggest danger and threat to humankind.