"We ask the leaf, "Are you complete in yourself?" And the leaf answers, "No, my life is in the branches." We ask the branch, and the branch answers, "No my life is in the root." We ask the root, and it answers, "No my life is in the trunk and the branches and the leaves. Keep the branches stripped of leaves, and I shall die," So it is with the great tree of being. Nothing is completely and merely individual."
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"The question any novel is really trying to answer is, Is life worth living?"
"Waiting for your answer is one of the most painful things I have ever been through. At least let me know whether or not I hurt you."
"Well you found us strength and solutions but I liked the tension And not always knowing the answers when you're gonna lose it, you're gonna lose it."
"Instead of considering that the worst way to persuade or please others is to try thus strongly to please ourselves, and that to listen well and to answer well are some of the greatest charms we can have in conversation."
"O the anguish of that thought that we can never atone to our dead for the stinted affection we gave them, for the light answers we returned to their plaints or their pleadings, for the little reverence we showed to that sacred human soul that lived so close to us, and was the divinest thing God had given us to know!"
"Letter-writing I imagine is counted as 'work' from which you must abstain, and I scribble this letter simply from the self-satisfied notion that you will like to hear from me. You see, I have asked no questions, which are the torture-screws of correspondence. Hence you have nothing to answer."
"There are problems in this universe for which there are no answers. Nothing. Nothing can be done."
"Movies work, in my opinion, on the best level when they're more enigmatic, when we don't say it's this or that and where it raises more questions than answers."
"We shouldn't get hung up on the questions we can't answer because life, by definition, is confusing. We're never going to have all the answers. Never. We should focus on the questions we can answer and make peace with the ones we can't."
"If you're never called, then you don't know any better. If you are called and don't answer the call, then that is the most difficult and painful. If you are called and do answer the call, it is the adventure of your life."
"But when will our leaders learn - war is not the answer."
"I used to say to myself, 'What the devil have you got to be proud about, Marilyn Monroe?' And I'd answer, 'Everything, everything.'"
"You say: I am not free. But I have raised and lowered my arm. Everyone understands that this illogical answer is an irrefutable proof of freedom."
"I began to realize that the most profound wisdom of man was rooted in the answers given by faith and that I did not have the right to deny them on the grounds of reason; above all, I realized that these answers alone can form a reply to the question of life."
"When Levin thought what he was and what he was living for, he could find no answer to the questions and was reduced to despair; but when he left off questioning himself about it, it seemed as though he knew both what he was and what he was living for, acting and living resolutely and without hesitation."
"The essence of any religion lies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to the infinite universe that surrounds me?"
"You asked me once,' said O'Brien, 'what was in Room 101. I told you that you knew the answer already. Everyone knows it. The thing that is in Room 101 is the worst thing in the world."
"I am now . . . on a subject, which fills me with inexpressible concern . . . . But as it has been a kind of destiny, that has thrown me upon this service, I shall hope that my undertaking it is designed to answer some good purpose."
"Did I say the book of nature is a catechism? Yes, But, after it answers the first question with "God," nothing but questions follow."