Quotes about existence
page 15

“Love can't be forced into existence,(…)It won't come simply because you will it to happen”

Judith McNaught (1944) American writer

Source: Once and Always

“whiskey makes the heart beat faster
but it sure doesn't help the
mind and isn't it funny how you can ache just
from the deadly drone of
existence?”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Help, Heart

“Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power—not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Variant: Sometimes people try to destroy you, precisely because they recognize your power — not because they don’t see it, but because they see it and they don’t want it to exist.

People

“Knowledge exists in two forms - lifeless, stored in books, and alive, in the consciousness of men. The second form of existence is after all the essential one; the first, indispensable as it may be, occupies only an inferior position.”

Albert Einstein (1879–1955) German-born physicist and founder of the theory of relativity

Men, Books, Knowledge

“I certainly do not exist from nine to six, when I am at the office.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that. Work, my dear Blushweaver, is like fertilizer.”
“It smells?”
He smiled. “No, I was thinking that work is like fertilizer in that I’m glad it exists; I just don’t ever want to get stuck in it.”

Brandon Sanderson book Warbreaker

Source: Warbreaker

Smile, Thinking

“It's my petty fear of personal rejection that allows so many true evils to exist. My cowardice enables atrocities.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Damned

Source: Damned

Fear, Evil, Personality

“God, I felt certain, did not mind that I didn’t press my hands together to pray. I was casual, but I was sincere. I knew that God existed as the Correct Answer inside my chest.”

Augusten Burroughs book A Wolf at the Table

Source: A Wolf at the Table

God, Sincerity

“One doesn’t become a witch to run around being harmful, or to run around being helpful either, a district visitor on a broomstick. It’s to escape all that - to have a life of one’s own, not an existence doled out to by others.”

Sylvia Townsend Warner book Lolly Willowes

Source: Lolly Willowes

Life, Help

“And there is a time, glorious too in its own way, when one scarcely exists, when one is a complete void. I mean, when boredom seems the very stuff of life.”

Henry Miller (1891–1980) American novelist

Life, Way, Time

“It isn't by getting out of the world that we become enlightened, but by getting into the world…by getting so tuned in that we can ride the waves of our existence and never get tossed because we become the waves.”

Ken Kesey book Kesey's Garage Sale

Source: Kesey's Garage Sale

World

“The past is weird. I mean, does it really exist? It feels like it exists, but where is it? And if it did exists, but doesn’t now, then where did it go?”

Ruth Ozeki book A Tale for the Time Being

Source: A Tale for the Time Being

Feeling, Past

“If people were more concerned with how they looked on the inside, then on the outside, the world would be a nicer place to exist.”

David Walsh (1955) Irish sports journalist

Beauty, People, World

“Truth only exists for those who cling to it.
"Sosuke Aizen”

Tite Kubo (1977) Japanese manga artist

Source: Bleach―ブリーチ― 46 [Burīchi 46]

Truth

“The 'what should be' never did exist, but people keep trying to live up to it. There is no 'what should be,' there is only what is.”

Lenny Bruce (1925–1966) comedian and social critic

People

“All the times I have suddenly realized that my parents are dead, even now, it still surprises me, to exist in the world while that which made me has ceased to exist.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

World, Parent, Time, Dead

“What do I want?
The answer to that question does not exist.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Question

“pain is absurd because it exists, nothing more.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Pain

“The sea is everything. It covers seven tenths of the globe . . . The sea is only a receptacle for all the prodigious, supernatural things that exist inside it. It is only movement and love; it is the living infinite.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Love, Sea

“The individual does actually carry on a double existence: one designed to serve his own purposes and another as a link in a chain, in which he serves against, or at any rate without, any volition of his own.”

Sigmund Freud (1856–1939) Austrian neurologist known as the founding father of psychoanalysis

“In dreams you don't need to make any distinctions between things. Not at all. Boundaries don't exist. So in dreams there are hardly ever collisions. Even if there are, they don't hurt. Reality is different. Reality bites. Reality, reality.”

Haruki Murakami book Sputnik Sweetheart

Source: Sputnik Sweetheart

Dreams, Reality, Hurt

“Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence”

O. Henry (1862–1910) American short story writer

Source: Selected Stories

“Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't the will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never cease to exist.”

Orson Scott Card book Ender's Game

Source: Ender's Game

Nature

“As a girl, she had come to believe in the ideal man -- the prince or knight of her childhood stories. In the real world, however, men like that simply didn't exist.”

Nicholas Sparks book Message in a Bottle

Source: Message in a Bottle

Men, World, Girl, Childhood

“While thoughts exist, words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.”

Cyril Connolly (1903–1974) British author

Source: The Unquiet Grave: A Word Cycle by Palinurus

Literature

“We have both lost ourselves and created something else, something that exists only as an interlacing of the two of us.”

Robert James Waller (1939–2017) American writer

“I have always held the old-fashioned opinion that the primary object of a work of fiction should be to tell a story; and I have never believed that the novelist who properly performed this first condition of his art, was in danger, on that account, of neglecting the delineation of character — for this plain reason, that the effect produced, by any narrative of events is essentially dependent, not on the events themselves, but on the human interest which is directly connected with them. It may be possible in novel-writing to present characters successfully without telling a story; but it is not possible to tell a story successfully without presenting characters: their existence, as recognizable realities, being the sole condition on which the story can be effectively told. The only narrative which can hope to lay a strong hold on the attention of readers is a narrative which interests them about men and women — for the perfectly obvious reasons that they are men and women themselves.”

Wilkie Collins book The Woman in White

Source: Collins explaining what he calls the literary principal guiding him, in the preface of the second edition of The Woman in White. Also in Reality's Dark Light: The Sensational Wilkie Collins by Maria K. Bachman & Don Richard Cox [University of Tennessee Press, 2003, ISBN 1-572-33274-3] ( p. xiv https://books.google.com/books?id=_X8AlmIp0dwC&pg=PR14)

Women, Men, Hope, Art

“Clouds are poems, and the most moving poems linger on the blackboard so long, written in cursive so lovely, they also exist inside our fingertips. We never really erase them at the end of the lesson.”

Ann Beattie (1947) Short story writer, novelist, professor

Source: Walks with Men

Love

“The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it.”

Steven Pressfield (1943) United States Marine

Source: Do the Work

“I wonder what it feels like to have no desires left because you have satisfied them all, smothered them with money even before they are born. Is an existence without desire very desirable? And is the poverty of desire better than rank poverty itself?”

Vikas Swarup book Q & A

Source: Q & A

Money, Feeling

“That's why people take vacations. No to relax or find excitement or see new places. To escape the death that exists in routine things.”

Don DeLillo book White Noise

Source: White Noise

Death, People

“Art always serves beauty, and beauty is the joy of possessing form, and form is the key to organic life since no living thing can exist without it.”

Borís Pasternak book Doctor Zhivago

Source: Doctor Zhivago

Beauty, Life, Beauty, Art

“Can a free government possibly exist with the Roman Catholic religion?”

John Adams (1735–1826) 2nd President of the United States

1820s <br class="br">Source: Letter to Thomas Jefferson (19 May 1821), published in Adams-Jefferson Letters: The Complete Correspondence Between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams http://books.google.com/books?vid=ISBN0807842303&id=SzSWYPOz6M8C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=kTAZL3ImRq&dq=%22Adams-Jefferson+letters%22&sig=tVGzBe0XVhXaF2p0FQLGy4GK6bk#PRA2-PR17,M1 (UNC Press, 1988), p. 573

Religion

“Everyone, he went on, speaks a language he does not understand, but which now and then is understood by others. That is enough to permit one to exist and at least to be misunderstood.”

Thomas Bernhard book Gargoyles

Source: Gargoyles

Understanding

“Why is it we want so badly to memorialize ourselves? Even while we're still alive. We wish to assert our existence, like dogs peeing on fire hydrants.”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: Der blinde Mörder

Dogs, Memory

“I live because I do not exist.”

Dave Eggers book What Is the What

What Is the What

“She had made the choice for him - in a moment of flight and panic, but she had made it - not realizing that her Jace would rather die than be like this, and that she'd been not so much saving his life as damning him to an existence he would despise.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Life

“… in an infinite universe, anything that could be imagined might somewhere exist.”

Dean Koontz book Dead and Alive

Source: Dead and Alive

Imagination, Universe

“They kissed for the sort of endless moment that only exists between lovers whose lips are still new territory to one another.”

Scott Lynch book Red Seas Under Red Skies

Source: Red Seas Under Red Skies

Lovers, Kiss

“I fell victim to the temptation of every autobiographer, to the illusion that since the past exists only in one's memories and the words which strive vainly to encapsulate them, it is possible to create past events simply by saying they occurred.”

Salman Rushdie book Midnight's Children

Source: Midnight's Children

Memory, Past

“I exist, that is all, and I find it nauseating.”

Jean Paul Sartre book Being and Nothingness

Nausea (1938)
Source: Being and Nothingness

“All the privilege I claim for my own sex (it is not a very enviable one: you need not covet it), is that of loving longest, when existence or when hope is gone!”

Jane Austen book Persuasion

Source: Persuasion

Love, Hope, Sex

“She would consider each day a miracle - which indeed it is, when you consider the number of unexpected things that could happen in each second of our fragile existences.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: Veronika Decides to Die

“We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence… on pain of liquidation”

George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950) Irish playwright

Pain, Appearance

“Nice to know I have that effect on boys. I mean, Christopher doesn't even know I exist, and Brandon Stark practically throws up when he sees me. Having my brain transplated into a supermodel's body was doing wonders for my love life.”

Meg Cabot book Being Nikki

Source: Being Nikki

Love, Life, Boy

“Everything in existence undergoes constant change. The things that surround us, even our selves are temporary manifestations of Ki energy.”

Ilchi Lee (1950) South Korean businessman

Source: Brain Wave Vibration: Getting Back Into the Rhythm of a Happy, Healthy Life

Change

“People got such a charge from seeing their names in print. Proof of existence. I could picture a squabble of ghosts ripping through piles of newspapers. Pointing at a name on the page. See, there I am. I told you I lived. I told you I was.”

Gillian Flynn book Sharp Objects

Source: Sharp Objects

People

“The real opposition is that between the ego-bound man, whose existence is structured by the principle of having, and the free man, who has overcome his egocentricity.”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

“Contentment and happiness didn't exist in my life for more than a few moments at a time, and they were really only illusionary. There was always something hidden. Lying in wait to spring up and ruin everything.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

Life, Spring, Lying, Time

“But whether or not you are here, you are here—because these words are for you, and they wouldn't exist if you weren't here in some way.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: Dash & Lily's Book of Dares

Way

“I guess what I'm trying to say is that you two make me believe that true love really exists. And that even the darkest hours can't take that away.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Love

“You can't be real," Delilah murmurs.
"Says who?" I ask. "Did you really think that a story exists only when you're reading it?”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Between the Lines

Thinking, Reading

“Knowing the precies answers is not as crucial as the certainty that the answers do, in fact, exist.”

Chris Heimerdinger (1963) American writer

Source: Feathered Serpent, Part 2

“I remember staring at my son endlessly when he was an infant, stunned by his very existence, wondering where on earth he had come from.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

“I don't remember who said this, but there really are places in the heart you don't even know exist until you love a child.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year

Love, Heart

“Kids, the fiction is the truth inside the lie, and the truth of this fiction is simple enough: the magic exists.”

Stephen King book It

It (1986)

Truth, Lie

“Just because you are blind, and unable to see my beauty doesn't mean it does not exist.”

Margaret Cho (1968) American stand-up comedian

Beauty

“There is no such thing as was—only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

“Then spoke the thunder
DA Datta: what have we given?
My friend, blood shaking my heart
The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed.”

T.S. Eliot book The Waste Land

Variant: The awful daring of a moment's surrender
Which an age of prudence can never retract
By this, and this only, we have existed
Source: The Waste Land (1922)

Age, Heart