WE ARE MEANING SEEKING CREATURES

'We cannot simply eat, sleep, hunt and reproduce - we are meaning seeking creatures. The western world has done away with religion but not with religious impulses; we seem to need some higher purpose, some point to our lives - money and leisure, social progress, are not not enough.'

Jeanette Winterson in Alister E McGrath, Through a Glass Darkly, p.165.

AGE-BASED WORRY

'Young person worry: What if nothing I do matters?
Old person worry: What if everything I do does?'
Jenny Offill, Weather, p.21

IN THE ZONE

'Through personal experience, acquaintance with hundreds of other craftspeople, and interaction with thousands of students, I have witnesses the pleasure and empowerment that skilled craftwork offers. There is a deep centredness in trusting one's hands, mind, and imagination to work as a single, well-tuned instrument, a centredness that touches upon the very essence of fulfillment. What better way to inhabit one's innate human capabilities productively and powerfully, like an engine firing smoothly on all pistons.'

Peter Korn, Why We Make Things & Why It Matters, p.53.

THE PLEASURE OF CREATIVITY

'...my experience has been that the effort to bring something new and meaningful into the world - whether in the arts, the kitchen, or the marketplace - is exactly what generates the sense of meaning and fulfillment for which so many of us yearn so deeply.' 

Peter Korn, Why We Make Things & Why It Matters: The Education of a Craftsman, p.13. 

POST-MODERNISM

'If you think that you have discovered the true meaning of everything by discovering that there is no meaning, or that there is something intently clever about the idea of sticking together bits and bobs in a haphazard way to create "art" that doesn't say a thing, you're in for a bit of a shock. This isn't "new" or "cutting edge" or "avante-garde": it's just the philosophy that cockroaches developed long before your ancestors dragged themsleves out of the slime. Gussying it up in big words doesn't make it any more penetrating or original.'

Melinda Selmys, Sexual Authenticity, p.92.

MEANING

'I had a motive for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently I assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to to, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in a way that they find most advantageous to themselves...For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.'

Aldous Huxley in Randy Newman, Questioning Evangelism: Engaging People's Hearts the Way Jesus Did, p.67.