Hanya Yanagihara Quotes

Every kid goes to school full of questions about meaning. You know, 'What's my place in the universe? What does it mean to be a human being? What are human beings?' Existing courses cannot help you answer those questions. They can't even help you ask them.

The whole theme of Interview with the Vampire was Louis's quest for meaning in a godless world. He searched to find the oldest existing immortal simply to ask, What is the meaning of what we are?

Because our choices are largely based on survival. But if life is eternal, life is not a question.

It was the ghost of rationality itself ... This is the ghost of normal everyday assumptions which declares that the ultimate purpose of life, which is to keep alive, is impossible, but that this is the ultimate purpose of life anyway, so that great minds struggle to cure diseases so that people may live longer, but only madmen ask why. One lives longer in order that he may live longer. There is no other purpose. That is what the ghost says.

Does life have any meaningful purpose?

Who am I, why am I here? Forget the question, someone give me another beer.

If life is so meaningless, then why are we always bringing it up?

We can tell the world that there is life after death, but the world really seems to be wondering if there is life before death.

In the last analysis, it is our conception of death which decides our answers to all the questions that life puts to us.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

Life has to be given a meaning because of the obvious fact that it has no meaning.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

Often and often must he have thought, that, to be or not to be forever, was a question, which must be settled; as it is the foundation, and the only foundation upon which we feel that there can rest one thought, one feeling, or one purpose worthy of a human soul.

I believe it doesn't matter what it is, as long as you can find something concrete to keep you busy while you are living your meaningless life.

If we have our own why of life, we shall get along with almost any how. Man does not strive for pleasure; only the Englishman does.

...the reason for living was to get ready to stay dead a long time.

Some have speculated that the way [Albert] Camus died made his theories on absurdity a self-fulfilling prophecy. Others would say it was the triumphant meaningful way he lived that allowed him to rise heroically above absurdity.

Without zest, what is life? Just waiting for death?

What is the meaning of human life, or, for that matter, of the life of any creature? To know the answer to this question means to be religious. You ask: Does it make any sense, then, to pose this question? I answer: The man who regards his fellow creatures as meaningless is not merely unhappy but hardly fit for life.

I've been on the planet for 40 years now, and I'm still none the wiser as to what it's all about really. I've never worried about life's big questions. People at my age sit about pondering, 'Why are we here?' The only time I ever asked myself that is when Suzanne booked us a surprise holiday to Lanzarote.

A death-blow is a life-blow to some Who, till they died, did not alive become; Who, had they lived, had died, but when They died, vitality begun.

And I wonder if there is really any point to what I'm doing, or what I'm supposed to make of a world where a man can get rich playing "let's pretend

The most important question a human being has to face... What is it? The question, Why are we here?

Robin turned and looked straight into her. "What's life for?" "I don't know." "I don't either. But I don't think it's about winning.