Make Sense Quotes - Page 2

• Some readers and commentators really want to scrape your insides out to make sense of your work. Others say, there's the work, it speaks for itself. Personally, I fall somewhere in the middle.

  J. K. Rowling

  Fall, Want, Speak

  Source: www.wbur.org

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• People get so upset about lyrics, and they're probably totally cool with horror movies. That doesn't really make sense.

  Chris Reifert

  People, Upset, Horror

  "To Learn as a Listener". Interview with Marc Masters, Grayson Currin, pitchfork.com. July 1, 2011.

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• Gogol remembers having to do the same thing when he was younger, when his grandparents died...He remembers, back then, being bored by it, annoyed at having to observe a ritual no one else he knew followed, in honor of people he had seen only a few times in his life...Now, sitting together at the kitchen table at six-thirty every evening, his father's chair empty, this meatless meal is the only thing that seems to make sense.

  Jhumpa Lahiri

  Father, People, Grandparent

  "The Namesake". Book by Jhumpa Lahiri, 2003.

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• Nonsense is that which does not fit into the prearranged patterns which we have superimposed on reality...Nonsense is nonsense only when we have not yet found that point of view from which it makes sense.

  Gary Zukav

  Reality, Views, Doe

  "The Dancing Wu Li Masters: An Overview of the New Physics". Book by Gary Zukav, March, 1979.

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• Men in plural […] can experience meaningfulness only because they can talk with and make sense to each other and themselves.

  Hannah Arendt

  Men, Meaningfulness

  Hannah Arendt (2013). “The Human Condition: Second Edition”, p.4, University of Chicago Press

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• Remember, despite the fact that this book is being sold as a 'fantasy' novel, you must take all of the things it says extremely seriously, as they are quite important, are in no way silly, and always make sense. Rutabaga.

  Brandon Sanderson

  Silly, Book, Fantasy Novels

  Brandon Sanderson (2016). “Alcatraz vs. the Evil Librarians”, p.74, Macmillan

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• The only good reason to embrace a philosophical position is that you are convinced it is true or at least makes sense of the world better than the alternatives.

  Julian Baggini

  Philosophical, Alternatives, World

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• Stories hold power because they convey the illusion that life has purpose and direction. Where God is absent from the lives of all but the most blessed, the writer, of all people, replaces that ordering principle. Stories make sense when so much around us is senseless, and perhaps what makes them most comforting is that, while life goes on and pain goes on, stories do us the favor of ending.

  John Hodgman

  Pain, Blessed, People

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• Facebook is inherently viral. There are lots of sites that include a contact importer, and for lots of them it doesn't really make sense. For Facebook it fits so well. It wasn't until a few years in that we started building some tools that made it easier to import friends to the site. That was a huge thing that spiked growth.

  Mark Zuckerberg

  Years, Growth, Tools

  "Startup School". Interview with Jason Kincaid, www.washingtonpost.com. October 24, 2009.

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• Cultural legacies are powerful forces. They have deep roots and long lives. They persist, generation after generation, virtually intact, even as the economic and social and demographic conditions that spawned them have vanished, and they play such a role in directing attitudes and behavior that we cannot make sense of our world without them.

  Malcolm Gladwell

  Powerful, Attitude, Our World

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• Our dreams take us into other worlds, alternative realities that help us make sense of day-to-day realities.

  Tom Hodgkinson

  Dream, Reality, Other Worlds

  Tom Hodgkinson, Dan Kieran (2010). “The Book of Idle Pleasures”, p.78, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• Nobody listens anymore. I can't talk to the walls because they're yelling at me, I can't talk to my wife; she listens to the walls. I just want someone to hear what I have to say. And maybe if I talk long enough it'll make sense. And I want you to teach me to understand what I read.

  Ray Bradbury

  Wall, Yelling, Long

  Ray Bradbury (2016). “Fahrenheit 451”, p.39, Hamilton Books

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• A myth is an image in terms of which we try to make sense of the world.

  Alan Watts

  Trying, World, Term

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• She felt, as she felt so often with Murphy, spattered with words that went dead as soon as they sounded; each word obliterated, before it had time to make sense, by the word that came next; so that in the end she did not know what had been said. It was like difficult music heard for the first time.

  Samuel Beckett

  Next, Firsts, Ends

  Samuel Beckett (2007). “I Can't Go On, I'll Go On: A Samuel Beckett Reader”, p.96, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• Calvin: Look, a dead bird! Hobbes: It must've hit a window. Calvin: Isn't it beautiful? It's so delicate. Sighhh... once it's too late, you appreciate what a miracle life is. You realize that nature is ruthless and our existence is very fragile, temporary, and precious. But to go on with your daily affairs, you can't really think about that... which is probably why everyone takes the world for granted and why we act so thoughtlessly. It's very confusing. I suppose it will all make sense when we grow up. Hobbes: No doubt.

  Bill Watterson

  Beautiful, Growing Up, Thinking

  "There's Treasure Everywhere". Book by Bill Watterson, March 1996.

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• Shoes would interfere with her conversation, for she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her complicity. We all are, I suppose. Trying to invent our version of the story. All human odes are essentially one, "My life; what I stole from history, and how I live with it.

  Barbara Kingsolver

  Shoes, Feet, Trying

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• I pray for meaning. I pray for the limits of reality to become clear. For a world – and a type of being – that makes sense. I pray for a life after death that is not like this life. I pray for the end of mystery. What would a life be like with all the mysteries solved? If there were no questions, there’d be no stories. If there were no stories, there’d be no language. If there was no language there’d be no . . . What?

  Scarlett Thomas

  Reality, Life Is Like, Stories

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• I imagined Kandinsky's mind, spread out all over the world, and then gathered together. Everyone having only a piece of the puzzle. Only in a show like this could you see the complete picture, stack the pieces up, hold them to the light, see how it all fit together. It made me hopeful, like someday my life would make sense too, if I could just hold all the pieces together at the same time.

  Janet Fitch

  Light, Hopeful, Mind

  Janet Fitch (2002). “White Oleander”, Large Print Press

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• Religion begins in story. Yes, it does, because religion is an attempt to make sense of what is incomprehensible to us, what is inexplicable, what is awe-inspiring, what is frightening, what moves us to great wonder, and so on. That is the religious impulse, and it is part of our psychological makeup -- of everyone's psychological makeup.

  Philip Pullman

  Religious, Moving, Makeup

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• In the world at large, people are rewarded or punished in ways that are often utterly random. In the garden, cause and effect, labor and reward, are re-coupled. Gardening makes sense in a senseless world. By extension, then, the more gardens in the world, the more justice, the more sense is created.

  Andrew Weil

  Garden, People, Justice

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• If you're a preacher, you talk for a living, so even if you don't make sense, you learn to make nonsense eloquently.

  Andrew Young

  Nonsense, Preacher, Ifs

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• It’s funny—when people call you “shy,” they usually smile. Like it’s cute, some funny little habit you’ll grow out of when you’re older, like the gaps in your grin when your baby teeth fall out. If they knew how it felt—really being shy, not just unsure at first—they wouldn’t smile. Not if they knew how the feeling knots up your stomach or makes your palms sweat or robs you of the ability to say anything that makes sense. It’s not cute at all.

  Claudia Gray

  Cute, Baby, Fall

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• He told people that their sins were forgiven, and never waited to consult all the other people whom their sins had undoubtedly injured. He unhesitatingly behaved as if He was the party chiefly concerned, the person chiefly offended in all offenses. This makes sense only if He really was God whose laws are broken and whose love is wounded in every sin.

  C. S. Lewis

  Party, Love Is, Law

  C. S. Lewis (2012). “The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics”, p.55, HarperCollins UK

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• The story comes around, pushing at our brains, and soon we are trying to ravel back to the beginning, trying to put families into order and make sense of things. But we start with one person, and soon another and another follows, and still another, until we are lost in the connections.

  Louise Erdrich

  Order, Brain, Trying

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• In the end, it is my belief, words are the only things that can construct a world that makes sense.

  Kate Atkinson

  World, Belief, Ends

  Kate Atkinson (2013). “Behind the Scenes at the Museum: A Novel”, p.379, St. Martin's Press

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