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"It doesn't matter where I go, I don't want to be there. And then I get to the next place, and I don't want to be there either."
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Exlpore more Existentialism quotes
"We must have sinned greatly, at some juncture long buried in our protozoic past, to deserve such a universe."
"It is certain that we cannot escape anguish, for we are anguish."
"He had not the benefit of existentialist terminology; but what he felt was a very clear case of the anxiety of freedom - that is, the realization that one is free and the realization that being free is a situation of terror."
"That's the existential problem," Fat said, "based on the concept that We are what we do, rather than, We are what we think. It finds its first expression in Goethe's Faust, Part One, where Faust says, 'Im Anfang war das Wort'. He's quoting the opening of the Fourth Gospel; 'In the beginning was the Word.' Faust says, 'Nein. Im Anfang war die Tat.' In the beginning was the Deed. From this, all existentialism comes."
"In the purifying sweep of atheism human beings lost all special value. The numb misery of the horse was matched by that of the farmer; the once-green ferny lives crushed into coal's fossiliferous strata were no more anonymous and obliterated than Clarence's own life would soon be, in a wink of earth's tremendous time. Without Biblical blessing the physical universe became sherry horrible and disgusting. All fleshy acts became vile, rather than merely some. The reality of men slaying lambs and cattle, fish and fowl to sustain their own bodies took on an aspect of grisly comedy--the blood-soaked selfishness of a cosmic mayhem."
"People. You must love people. Men are admirable. I wantto vomit-and suddenly, there it is: the Nausea."
"Why I came here, I know not; where I shall go it is useless to inquire - in the midst of myriads of the living and the dead worlds, stars, systems, infinity, why should I be anxious about an atom?"
"Thinking is not enough. Nothing is. There is no final enough of wisdom, experience--any fucking thing. No Holy Grail, No Final Satori, no final solution. Just conflict."
"Why am I made the way I am? Why do I care about all the wrong things, and nothing at all for the right ones? Or, to tip it another way: how can I see so clearly that everything I love or care about is illusion, and yet--for me, anyway--all that's worth living for lies in that charm?"
"But as he plodded along a vague and almost hallucinatory pall hazed over his mind; he found himself at one point, with no notion of how it could be, a step from an almost certain fatal cliffside fall-falling humiliatingly and helplessly, he thought; on and on, with no one even to witness it. Here there existed no one to record his or anyone else's degradation, and any courage or pride which might manifest itself here at the end would go unmarked: the dead stones, the dust-stricken weeds dry and dying, perceived nothing, recollected nothing, about him or themselves."
Explore more quotes by Laurie Halse Anderson
"The night sky stretched on forever above me, the stars flung like glass beads and pearls on a black velvet cloak."
"Fracture lines etch the surface of the glass box as if a body fell from the sky and landed on it. He doesn't hear the impact, can't smell the blood."
"She turns to us, acts surprised to see us, then does the bit with the back of the hand to the forehead. 'You're lost!' 'You're angry!' 'You're in the wrong school!' 'You're in the wrong country!' 'You're on the wrong planet!"
"I just want to sleep. A coma would be nice. Or amnesia. Anything, just to get rid of this, these thoughts, whispers in my mind. Did he rape my head, too?"
"The smoke shifted direction and I breathed in. Breathed out. On the inhale I was angry. On the exhale there it was again. Fear. The fear made me angry and the anger made me afraid and I wasn't sure who he was anymore. Or who I was."
"If I can write a book that will help the world make a little more sense to a teen, then that's why I was put on the planet."
"A little kid asks my dad why that man is chopping down the tree.Dad: He's not chopping it down. He's saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By cutting off the damage you make it possible for the tree to grow again. You watch - by the end of summer, this tree will be the strongest on the block."
"It's easier not to say anything. Shut your trap, button your lip, can it. All that crap you hear on TV about communication and expressing feelings is a lie. Nobody really wants to hear what you have to say."
"And that's the problem. When you'realive, people can hurt you. It's easier to crawl into a bonecage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybodyout.But it's a lie."
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