A Quote by W. Somerset Maugham
The only important thing in a book is the meaning that it has for you.
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But the only important thing in a book is the meaning it has for you; it may have other and much more profound meanings for the critic, but at second-hand they can be of small service to you.
It has no meaning, what do you use to write, the only thing that is important is: what do you write. A machine to write a book instead of a writer is not invented yet, and probably will never be.
The only other thing which I think is important is: Don't write a book or start a book with the expectation of communicating a message in a very important way.
Advice for a human. 81. You can't find happiness looking for the meaning of life. Meaning is only the third most important thing. It comes after loving and being. 82. If you think something is ugly, look harder. Ugliness is just a failure of seeing.
Life is often more a sweat than a pleasure but, paradoxically, it is the sweat that gives true meaning to all of life's pleasures. This is the message from Mack Bolan, book after book, and it is the only thing dignifying this type of fiction.
There is not one big cosmic meaning for all, there is only the meaning we each give to our life, an individual meaning, an individual plot, like an individual novel, a book for each person.
But there's the rub. The present can never deliver one thing: meaning. The way of happiness and meaning are not the same. To find happiness, a man need only live in the moment; he need only live for the moment. But if he wants meaning--the meaning of his dreams, his secrets, his life--a man must reinhabit his past, however dark, and live for the future, however uncertain. Thus nature dangles happiness and meaning before us all, insisting only that we choose between them.
There is one thing we know about meaning, that meaning consists in attachment to something bigger than you are. The larger the thing that you can credibly attach yourself to, the more meaning you get out of life.
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.
My father used to say: Every bird is one bird, and every book is one book, and every bird and every book is one thing too, under the words and the feathers." He finished with a flourish, as though the meaning of this was self-evident.
The most important thing about writing a book is having book parties.
A story is a way to say something that can't be said any other way, and it takes every word in the story to say what the meaning is. You tell a story because a statement would be inadequate. When anybody asks what a story is about, the only proper thing is to tell them to read the story. The meaning of fiction is not abstract meaning but experienced meaning.
Now, to describe the process of the Wrapped Reichstag, which went from 1971 to '95, there is an entire book about that, because each one of our projects has its own book. The book is not an art book, meaning it's not written by an art historian.
The Bible is not a book that you can open and say, 'Now, Lord, put some magic into my soul that will open up the meaning of this book.' There is only one way really to understand the Word, and that is through wrestling with the circumstances and happenings of life.
Someone who can search for something is happy. Searching gives a meaning to life. Nowadays it’s not so easy to find something you might be looking for. The most important thing, however, is the search itself, the way you take. It’s not so important where it leads. that’s why my characters are always looking for something, maybe only a cat, a sheep or a wife, but that is at least the beginning of a story.
People wonder why there seems to be no meaning in life. Meaning does not exist a priori. There is no meaning existing in life; one has to create it. Only if you create it will you discover it. It has to be invented first. It is not lying there like a rock, it has to be created like a song. It is not a thing, it is significance that you bring through your consciousness.
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