Elliot Perlman Quotes

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

The whole of science, and one is tempted to think the whole of the life of any thinking man, is trying to come to terms with the relationship between yourself and the natural world. Why are you here, and how do you fit in, and what's it all about.

What is the value of your existence?

Being seen is important for people. Doesn't happen enough for anyone. We're not here long in this world.

Kilgore Trout once wrote a short story which was a dialogue between two pieces of yeast. They were discussing the possible purposes of life as they ate sugar and suffocated in their own excrement. Because of their limited intelligence, they never came close to guessing that they were making champagne.

These big questions: Who are we? Where are we? What are we doing here? They never ask that in the mainstream. They just leave that to religions to divert people off into rigid belief systems.

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.

People just want to know that they matter.

What's the point of being alive," she said, "if you're not going to communicate?

Thou madest man, he knows not why, he thinks he was not made to die.

He was justifying his existence, than which life can do no greater; for life achieves its summit when it does to the uttermost that which it was equipped to do.

We are born to live, we are born to understand, we are born to carry a cursed pattern and be transformed by pain.

We're here on Earth to fart around

We do not know why we are born into the world, but we can try to find out what sort of a world it is - at least in its physical aspects.

If you just take it down to bare facts, the reason for living is the reason you make it. I mean the brain was made to create.

For man to be able to live he must either not see the infinite, or have such an explanation of the meaning of life as will connect the finite with the infinite.

If you are always frightened for yourself you can't act, and then life loses its purpose. You just have to tell yourself that, when you get right down to it, you don't matter all that much.

‎"Do you know that nothing you do in this life will ever matter, unless it is about loving God and loving the people he has made?

If you know what life is worth, you will look for yours on earth.

Stories turn anonymous strangers into people who matter.

Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is incomprehensible for himself, his life is senseless, if love is not revealed to him, if he does not encounter love, if he does not experience it and make it his own, if he does not participate intimately in it.

But no matter how many fish in the sea, itd be so empty without me.

The most subversive thing a woman can do is talk about her life as if it really matters.

I refuse to believe that we're only here to live and die.

We are engaged here in the most important pusuit in history. The search for meaning. What is What is the nature of being a person? What is the best way to go about being a person?How did we come to be, and wha will become of us when we are no longer? In short: What are the rules this game, and how might we best play it?