Quotes & Sayings About Things That Don't Make Sense

The idea of directing a film is a strange one for me. I feel anti-mathematical, in a way, in that sense. I don't like when things make sense. I prefer if they don't. — Johnny Depp

The things that matter don't necessarily make sense. — Russell Hoban

I won't wax poetic about the land in a perfectionist sense: we work hard out here, and things constantly threaten the tiny equilibrium we've established in the market garden. Whatever peace we find is often hard won. But I stand firmly with Berry and Kingsolver and so many other writers who possess a deep need to step outside the city to find a place of calm. I don't like the word "authentic"; at best, it's divisive and antagonistic, implying one way of being is intrinsically better than another. But I do very much favour the notion of alignment. I'm convinced that at the heart of the matter lies a desire to draw what we do into alignment with how we live. Some of us aren't in a place where we can live consistently on the land that holds our hearts, but come mishaps or miracles, we're bound and determined to make that land as much a part of who we are as humanly possible. — Jenna Butler

When I step into a character's shoes, I don't judge them. I make a conscious effort not to look from the outside in but look from the inside out, and when you do that it allows you to feel and sense things more, and act and react from a core, you know? — Abbie Cornish

I choose not to believe in superstitions. On race day, I have plans that I follow. I don't necessarily think about brushing my hair a certain way or doing certain things that make no sense as it relates to my performance. — Mark De Jonge

Stuff happens. We get lost. We try to control what will happen. We give up. We do things that don't make sense. We search for things in the wrongest of ways. We lose our way, but sometimes, if we're really, really strong, we manage to find our way back. — Jessica Sorensen

We're fascinated by things we can't figure out, by the things that don't have a right or wrong answer. Even when we can't explain them, we need to make some sort of sense out of them - create lists, find connections, map it out. Maybe that's why, when we can't seem to figure out all sorts of other more commonplace mysteries (like why we all keep looking at the sky as if it might talk to us), we still need to try.
We think maybe it's a lot like love, that need to make sense of the sky. We don't know why we need it, we can't explain it when it happens or when it doesn't, but we need it like we need air or food.
So we keep looking for it. — Kim Culbertson

One of my biggest pet peeves is that I just don't like it when characters do things that are funny to the writer, but you don't know why they're doing it and it doesn't make any sense. — Glenn Howerton

If I ever thought of directing again, I mean - I don't know, even the idea of directing a film is a strange one for me, because I feel kind of anti mathematics in a way in that sense. Anti - I don't like when things make sense, I prefer if they don't, so if I made a film, it wouldn't make any sense and no one would see it. So maybe I'll just make little films at home with my phone, never to be released. — Johnny Depp

At night my mind does not much care if what it thinks is here or there. It tells me stories, it invents and makes up things that don't make sense. I do not know why it does this stuff. The real world seems quite weird enough. — Shel Silverstein

In times of crisis, you get a public reaction that is incoherence on stilts. On the one hand, most people know that the government is not in the oil business. They don't want it in the oil business. They know there is nothing a man in Washington can do to plug a hole a mile down in the gulf.
On the other hand, they demand that the president 'take control.' They demand that he hold press conferences, show leadership, announce that the buck stops here and do something. They want him to emote and perform the proper theatrical gestures so they can see their emotions enacted on the public stage.
They want to hold him responsible for things they know he doesn't control. Their reaction is a mixture of disgust, anger, longing and need. It may not make sense. But it doesn't make sense that the country wants spending cuts and doesn't want cuts, wants change and doesn't want change. — David Brooks

Sometimes the things that make sense in light of eternity don't make sense while we're still walking it out here on earth. Yet we will trust him; yet we will praise him. — Melanie Shankle

Sometimes I think everybody else in the world knows something I don't know. Like they're all in on some kind of conspiracy and if I just knew that one secret thing, too, the things adults do that baffle me would make perfect sense. Other times I think I know something extra that the whole rest of the world doesn't know and that's why nothing they do makes sense. 'Cause they don't know it and all their actions stem from flawed logic. Unlike mine. — Karen Marie Moning

(W)hen a load is too heavy for one horse to pull, what do we do? Hitch another to it, don't we? That's just common sense. Well, son, things that sort of weigh on a man's mind and heart may be too heavy for him to make much headway with alone. — Kate Seredy

When you're alone, you harbour one hundred percent all of the good things. But this also means that you harbour all the bad things. I learnt my own goals slowed down when I was with others, but having shared the good things, sharing the pain, having that friendship excelled what I alone couldn't do. It doesn't need to be logical, friendships are a part of life, and when is that logical? Life doesn't make sense, but you don't have to live it alone. — Michael Rogers

we think we can truly short-circuit the ramp by killing things that don't make sense fast and doubling down on the ones that do. — Eric Ries

A lot of us don't get a sense of our personal power. I know the vast difference that one person can make in changing things. — Boots Riley

I'm not comfortable with words. I love images ,and I love sounds, and I love feelings. I like the idea of intuition. I think a lot of things in life are understood that way. But you internalize these things; they don't really pop out. Certain things are built inside - little areas of understanding. I feel that I live in darkness and confusion, and I'm trying, like we all are, to make some sort of sense of it. — David Lynch

I don't believe that laws against things that people do regularly, like safe and responsible use of marijuana, make any sense, — Peter B. Lewis

Dialectics is the philosophy of opposites."
I thought about this. "How do you make a philosophy out of opposites?"
"Well, you know how people are. They like to see things in black and white? Up or down, male or female?"
She had my attention now. "Uh-huh."
"Well, dialectics says that's all bullshit. That life is not about opposites, but about finding the balance between all these extremes."
I tried to sound less interested than I actually was. "How do you do that?" I said. "Find balance, I mean?"
"By paying attention," she said. "By trying to see how everything also contains its opposite." She took a drag on her cigarette. "Because if you live your life at the extremes, you go nuts. If you want to make any sense out of the world, you have to live in the gray."
"That sounds hard," I said.
"The hell yes it's hard," she said. "People don't like gray. It makes people uncomfortable. — Jennifer Finney Boylan

But that can't work, can it?" Said Richard. "If we do that, then this won't have happened. Don't we generate all sorts of paradoxes?"
Reg stirred himself from thought. "No worse than many that exist already," he said. "If the universe came to an end every time there was some uncertainty about what had happened in it, it would never have got beyond the first picosecond. And many of course don't. It's like a human body, you see. A few cuts and bruises here and there don't hurt it. Not even major surgery if its done properly. Paradoxes are just the scar tissue. Time and space heal themselves up around them and people simply remember a version of events which makes as much sense as they require it to make. That isn't to say if you get involved in a paradox a few things won't strike you as being very odd, but if you've got through life without that already happening to you, then I don't know which universe you've been living in, but it isn't this one — Douglas Adams

No ... big ... deal." He wasn't saying "bad," and he wasn't saying "good." He was saying that these things happen and they can transform your life, but at the same time don't make too big a deal of them, because that leads to arrogance and pride, or a sense of specialness. On the other hand, making too big a deal about your difficulties takes you in the other direction; it takes you into poverty, self-denigration, and a low opinion of yourself. — Pema Chodron

I don't believe in a lot of things from the Bronze Age, but an eye for an eye does make a sort of symmetrical sense to me. I really believe that if somebody takes a life, that [death penalty] is what they should get. I also think it's a lot more humane than keeping people in a cage for the rest of their life. — Bill Maher

Is there any media here? A couple? Excellent. I want to ask you, I don't know what persuasion you are, but would you like to go outside to a 1st Amendment zone? No! So did it make sense to have a 1st Amendment zone in Nevada? No, of course not. That's ridiculous. If we're talking about one of the most egregious things that happened down there, it was the 1st Amendment zone in Nevada. — Matt Shea

Competition gives birth to a lot of success, and if no one ever challenged you, you wouldn't go anywhere. It makes sense to compete with others for a promotion at work. But so many women take it a step further and won't even support other women. They end up competing over things that don't make sense - like how we look. — Lilly Singh

Frying-Pan Jack and I were in that camp, that's where he said to me, he'd been tramping since 1927, 'I told myself in '27, if I cannot dictate the conditions of my labor, I will henceforth cease to work.' You don't have to go to college to figure these things out, no sir. He said, 'I learned when I was young that the only true life I had was the life of my brain. But if it's true that the only real life I had was the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to someone for eight hours a day, for their particular use, on the presumption that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition? Fat chance! — Utah Phillips

In the face of death, especially violent death, things don't make sense anymore. So death is the dissolution of either physical form or psychological form. And when a form dissolves, always something shines through that had been obscured by the form. This is the formless One Life, the formless One Consciousness. — Eckhart Tolle

The rejection that we all take and the sadness and the aggravation and the loss of jobs and all of the things that we live through in our lives, without a sense of humor, I don't know how people make it. — Marlo Thomas

Nobody ever feels just one way about another person, Margo. We're so much more complicated than that. I can see a million things you want from me, just like the million things I want from you. Some of them are wonderful. Some are awful. Some contradict each other, and some don't make sense at all. But none of those things matter, not really. What matters is what you do about them. — Lindsay Ribar

Obsessed people are more concerned with obeying God than doing what is expected or fulfilling the status quo. A person who is obsessed with Jesus will do things that don't always make sense in terms of success or wealth on this earth. — Francis Chan

We all face things that appear to make little sense and don't seem to serve any good purpose. So rest is never found in the quest to understand it all. No, rest is found in trusting the One who understands it all and rules it all for his glory and our good. — Paul David Tripp

The thing that give me the mos' trouble was, it didn't make no sense. You don't look for no sense when lightnin' kill a cow, or it comes up a lood. That's jus' the way things is. But when a bunch of men take an' lock you up four years, it ought to have some meaning. Men is supposed to think things out. Here they put me in an' keep me an' feed me four years. That ought to either make me so I won't do her again or else punish me so I'll be afraid to do her again — John Steinbeck

But that age; remember that age? They're not the same. They don't put things together. That's why half of what they do looks full-on certifiable, to you or me or any sane adult. Things don't make sense, when you're that age; you don't make sense. You stop expecting to. — Tana French

I was aware that I had to pay off things in a convincing emotional fashion, that I had to address the lingering plot points in some real tangible sense, and that I had to make this a self-contained novel, in case I'm run over by a bus tomorrow or in case there's no demand for anyone to ever see a sequel. (Two things that I hope don't happen, incidentally.) — Tod Goldberg

I don't know what I believe anymore. If God does exist, then He's just an asshole, creating this world full of human suffering and letting all these terrible things happen to good people, and sitting there and doing nothing about it. At June's memorial service, a few people came up to me and said some really stupid things, like how everything happens for a reason, and God never gives us more than we can handle. All I could think was, does that mean if I was a weaker person, this never would've happened? Am I seriously supposed to buy that June's death was part of some stupid divine plan? I don't believe that. I can't. It just doesn't make sense. — Hannah Harrington

He's my dad. I love him. It's not that I don't love him. I really do. And I know I need to stick with him and try to help him. And I'd miss him. I know I would. I'd miss him and I'd miss home. I don't even really know why I said that. Well . . . yeah, I sort of do. It's just different with August. Not like he's perfect. But like you know what's going to happen next, and it makes sense. And even when it doesn't work like that, I can just say so to him . . . and then we talk about it and then things make sense again. I talk to my dad all the time but nothing ever changes. It's like everything I say just sort of bounces off him. But when August and I talk, stuff actually gets worked out. And it's such a relief. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

A lot of times, the inspiration for a novel is a messy bird's nest of shiny things. Little things that don't make a whole lot of sense or that, no matter how hard you look, cannot be found directly in the finished book. — Molly O'Keefe

It seems that the more we learn about our work, the easier and the more interesting it becomes to us. Tasks that used to be tedious now make sense, and we see how they're related to other elements of our jobs. Plus, they're easier to take care of now, so they don't bother us nearly as much when we need to do them. When we know more about our work and its ramifications, we can see the connections between what we do and the effects that those things have on other people. — Tom Walsh

CALVIN:
Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor?
When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny.
Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us?
HOBBES:
I suppose if we couldn't laugh at the things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life. — Bill Watterson

Everyone can be in a relationship. And being in a relationship doesn't means that you have to catch each other hands and walk in-front of everyone without caring anyone. Make conversations short and sweet..and to the point. Don't keep talking over the phones for hours with the things that doesn't makes sense. First priority should be parents. If wanna be in a relationship do it in a standard way. And first focus on what you should do. Do not prioritize your ambition on some one just without caring your parents.First focus on making life so that you can keep your parents and relationship happy. That when you are successful only then take a big step. — Lalit Sharma

What is your friend: the things you know, or the things you don't know. First of all, there's a lot more things you don't know. And second, the things you don't know is the birthplace of all your new knowledge! So if you make the things you don't know your friend, rather than the things you know, well then you're always on a quest in a sense. You're always looking for new information in the off chance that somebody who doesn't agree with you will tell you something you couldn't have figured out on your own! It's a completely different way of looking at the world. It's the antithesis of opinionated. — Jordan B. Peterson

For me it was just exciting to see fake news catching on like that. We don't you know, it's interesting. I think we don't make things up. We just distill it to, hopefully, its most humorous nugget. And in that sense it seems faked and skewed just because we don't have to be subjective or pretend to be objective. We can just put it out there. — Jon Stewart

So she quit working to make sense of things - we don't realise it, but it's hard work we do almost every waking moment, building out thoughts and memories and actions around time, things that happened yesterday, and things that are happening right now, and what's coming tomorrow, layering all of that simultaneously and holding it in balance. — Helen Oyeyemi

I don't know who explained this rule to me; maybe it was the product of my own speculations and fantasies. That would have been typical: I was always inventing stories and machinations to make sense of things I didn't understand, and I understood almost nothing. — Cesar Aira

I mean, I don't know how the world broke. And I don't know if there's a God who can help us fix it. But the fact that the world is broken - I absolutely believe that. Just look around us. Every minute - every single second - there are a million things you could be thinking about. A million things you could be worrying about. Our world - don't you just feel we're becoming more fragmented? I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You'd think we'd be getting better at it. But there's just more and more chaos. The pieces - they're everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it's right, but because it would mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe that. — Rachel Cohn

You don't have any kind of sense of being foolish when you are acting. When you're younger you don't want to look a fool, so you don't do things that might make you vulnerable. — Tom Wilkinson

I am a photographer who likes to make images, but I also want to get a sense and understanding of images that have already been made. I don't fabricate worlds; I pay attention to the things that already surround us. — Michael Light

One of the things that happens to people in grief is they secretly think they're crazy, because they realize they are thinking things that don't make sense. — Joan Didion

It just doesn't make sense," Elizabeth insisted. "Are we supposed to believe that civilization has just come to an end?"
"Well," Clark offered, "it was always a little fragile, wouldn't you say?" They were sitting together in the Skymiles Lounge, where Elizabeth and Tyler had set up camp.
"I don't know." Elizabeth spoke slowly, looking out at the tarmac. "I've been taking art history classes on and off for years, between projects. And of course art history is always pressed up close against non-art history, you see catastrophe after catastrophe, terrible things, all these moments when everyone must have thought the world was ending, but all those moments, they were all temporary. It always passes."
Clark was silent. He didn't think this would pass. — Emily St. John Mandel

I distrust thought. The interior life is highly overrated. I don't like the wispy and the vague ... or inductive logic in any kind of writing. I'm impatient with writers who make too much sense. The better things that I've done have come to me by instinct. — Barry Hannah

I quizzed him a lot on this point and i suspect the truth was that it was like a lot of things at that age: you don't have any clear reason, you just do it. You do it because you think it might get a laugh, or because you want to see if it'll cause a stir. And when you're asked to explain afterwards, it doesn't seem to make any sense. — Kazuo Ishiguro

Angeline's gaze swiveled to Zoe.
"Why didn't you have us pick up
something?"
"Because that's not my job!" Zoe
lifted her head up high. "We're here to
keep Jill's cover and make sure she stays off the radar. It's not my job to
feed you guys."
"In which sense?" I asked. I knew
perfectly well that was a mean thing to
say to her but couldn't resist. It took her a moment to pick up the double meaning.
First she paled; then she turned an angry red.
"Neither! I'm not your concierge.
Neither is Sydney. I don't know why she
always takes care of that stuff for you.
She should only be dealing with things
that are essential for your survival.
Ordering pizza isn't one of them."
I faked a yawn and leaned back into
the couch. "Maybe she figures if we're
well fed, you two won't look that
appetizing."
Zoe was too horrified to respond,
and Eddie shot me a withering look. — Richelle Mead

Her thoughts speed up and become less rational; her mind makes fantastic leaps. It's not that things don't make sense to her when she's like this - sometimes they make 'more' sense. They make sense the way dreams do. It's only when the dream is over that you see how odd it all was, how it actually didn't make sense at all. — Shari Lapena

Sometimes you fall, spinning through space, grasping for the things that keep you on this earth. Sometimes you catch them. They can be the hands of the people you love. They can be your pets- pups with funny names, cats with ferocious old souls. The thing that keeps you here can be your art. It can be things you have collected and invested with a certain sense of meaning. A flowered, buckled treasure chest of secrets. Shoes that make you taller and, therefore, closer to the heavens. A suit that belonged to your fairy godmother. A dress that makes you feel a little like the Goddess herself.
Sometimes you keep falling; you don't catch anything.
Sometimes you fall, spinning through space, grasping for the things that keep you here. Sometimes you catch them. Sometimes you don't.
Sometimes they catch you. — Francesca Lia Block

I trust people to be human. Sometimes you do things that make amazing amounts of sense; sometimes you do things that don't make any sense whatsoever. — Lupe Fiasco

There are things that two people say in the middle of the night That don't make sense to a third at breakfast. — Melissa Bank

Bagger Vance: Don't make no sense is all ... Man say he don't play no golf when he out here this shade of night hittin balls off in the dark where he can't even see 'em ...
Rannulph Junuh: Yep ... Well, I've done things that have made less sense ...
Bagger Vance: As we all have ... — Steven Pressfield

Isaak's okay-list:
1)when other people do things that don't make sense;
2)when I want to do things that don't make sense to me;
3)making mistakes;
4)when food touches other food on a plate;
5)asking to be alone sometimes;
6)asking people to explain what they mean when I don't understand;
7)trying new things; — Shukyou

That is what madness is, isn't it? All the wheels fly off the bus and things don't make sense any more. Or rather, they do, but it's not a kind of sense anyone else can understand. — Audrey Niffenegger

There are things
that make no sense,
that seem unreal,
that can't be grasped
or understood
or explained,
that maybe don't even exist ...
And still, somehow, those wonderful things touch and change our lives.
Isn't it strange? — Richelle E. Goodrich

I'm so scared of going crazy. I can already feel it happening. Things look weird, sound weird. Out of the blue I'll start thinking about stuff that doesn't make any sense. Sometimes the air around me feels ... hard. I don't even know what that means, but it's scary. I'm definitely starting. The Flare's taking my brain to hell. — James Dashner

Imagine, Bishop, that you have a beloved cat, but that your cat is not with you. If you close your eyes and further imagine you are petting your cat, the same neurons in your brains are activated as if you were petting the actual cat. Our minds may know the difference between its models and reality itself, but it prefers its models. So much so that we apprehend reality through our models, rather than directly via the sense. When I'm speaking to you, I have a little bishop in my head, and though I speak out load, I'm speaking to my little bishop. When you answer, I can only perceive you through my model of you.
Mentars also make models, but they don't apprehend reality through them. They end up, not with little people in their minds, but with highly complex rule sets. They relate to their models in the same way we relate to weather models, as things to consult, but not to conflate with external reality. — David Marusek

In North America, people get a sense that something is really wrong in government and in our culture. There is a corruption, not only in politics, but of spirit as well, when people are so quick to be violent with one another. I think everybody would like to be able to find a solution to make things better. We have the desire to reform inside of us, and we get frustrated because we don't know how to change things, even if it comes to our own behavior. Sometimes you get frustrated because you don't know how to stop that thing that you know is either hurtful to yourself or someone else. — Jennifer Beals

Humour allows us to see that ultimately things don't make sense. The only thing that truly makes sense is letting go of anything we continue to hold on to. Our ego-mind and emotions are a dramatic illusion. Of course, we all feel that they're real: my drama, your drama, our confrontations. We create these elaborate scenarios and then react to them. But there is nothing really happening outside our mind! This is karma's cosmic joke. You can laugh about the irony of this, or you can stick with your scenario. It's your choice. — Dzigar Kongtrul Rinpoche

I think it's human nature to blame yourself. When things fuck up in life, you always want to find a reason for it. There has to be a reason, right? Bad things don't just happen, especially to good people. So we sit around and try to make sense of it all, and the only sense we can make is that we probably deserved it, so we make up these ideas in our heads. — Jay McLean

People back home, people who haven't been in war, or at least not that war, sometimes don't seem to understand how the troops in Iraq acted. They're surprised - shocked - to discover we often joked about death, about things we saw. Maybe it seems cruel or inappropriate. Maybe it would be, under different circumstances. But in the context of where we were, it made a lot of sense. We saw terrible things, and lived through terrible things. Part of it was letting off pressure or steam, I'm sure. A way to cope. If you can't make sense of things, you start to look for some other way to deal with them. You laugh because you have to have some emotion, you have to express yourself somehow. — Chris Kyle

That's something that seems to happen when I'm writing, where maybe things that don't necessarily make a lot of logical sense are put together, and yet we struggle to make sense of these things somehow. I'm not quite sure why that is; it's something about human nature, I guess. — Kurt Wagner

I don't ever want to do anything that's obvious, and I also want to find ways to do things that are extremely new and exciting and can make sense in bizarre ways. I always want things to make sense in really bizarre ways. — Jack Antonoff

Delilah, pretend that it doesn't bother you. Move on
with your life, as if nothing ever happened. Nothing moves
a man, more than a woman who acts as if he didn't mean a
thing to her when he left. It bothers them, and they often
try to make sense of it. Meanwhile, you're putting
everything you have into yourself, and well, sometimes you
just don't know why things happen until later. — Jennifer Megan Varnadore

I think everybody goes through things in their life where they're like, 'This does not make any sense,' or 'I don't understand why this is happening,' but that's part of the journey of faith. — Taya Kyle

There are things in my life that are hard to reconcile, like divorce. Sometimes it is very difficult to make sense of how it could possibly happen. Laying blame is so easy. I don't have time for hate or negativity in my life. There's no room for it. — Reese Witherspoon

Nigerians don't buy houses because they're old. A renovated two-hundred-year-old mill granary, you know, the kind of thing Europeans like. It doesn't work here at all. But of course it makes sense because we are Third Worlders and Third Worlders are forward-looking, we like things to be new, because our best is still ahead, while in the West their best is already past and so they have to make a fetish of that past. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

When I say the things that don't make sense you answer me anyway. It's like having green in your shirt. — Mindy McGinnis

This date. You're really giving me a chance, right? I need for you to be open to things and not just playing along because I said I would keep chasing. I need a real chance because you've got me all messed up inside."

Staring up at Cooper, I held his gaze and forced a smile. "I like you a lot. I don't think we make any sense, but I wish we did."

"We could though," he said, taking my hand. "You're scared of all the surface stuff. The tats and the way I mouth off, but that's surface. On the inside, I know you're special. It's why I need a chance."

"I'm going on the date."

Sighing, Cooper frowned. "Because I said I would basically stalk you until you said yes."

"I don't expect anything from tonight. Good or bad. I just want to see what happens. I'm giving you a chance. — Bijou Hunter

I think we have a free will, and at the same moment we don't. We have to live with that. It doesn't make sense intellectually, but that's because our intellect is always trying to come up with a logical, rational explanation for things. To do that, it puts labels on things. But once you label something, you've got twoness. You've got the label, and you've got what you're labeling. And there is only oneness in the universe, even though we artificially believe in twoness. — Wayne Dyer

It's entirely possible to get to know someone without actually seeing them in person. In fact, it's better like that because none of the superficial stuff gets in the way. You really get to know a person. And it's easier to express yourself when you're writing things down. At least it is for me. I like to order my thoughts, and delete them if they don't make any sense. You can't do that in real life. — Cat Clarke

I don't think I shall ever find peace till I make up my mind about things,' he said gravely. He hesitated. 'It's very difficult to put into words. The moment you try you feel embarrassed. You say to yourself: "Who am I that I should bother myself about this, that, and the other? Perhaps it's only because I'm a conceited prig. Wouldn't it be better to follow the beaten track and let what's coming to you come?" And then you think of a fellow who an hour before was full of life and fun,and he's lying dead; it's all so cruel and meaningless. It's hard not to ask yourself what life is all about and whether there's any sense to it or whether it's all a tragic blunder of blind fate. — W. Somerset Maugham

I don't play the lottery. I don't care what my horoscope says. I think most things about the world could be improved if people thought more about what they're doing. When someone gets upset with their computer, I tend to side with the computer. I think art is overrated, and bridges are underrated. In fact, I don't understand why bridges aren't art. It seems to me they're penalized for having a use. If I make a bridge that ends in midair, that's a sculpture. But put it between two landmasses and let it ferry two hundred thousand cars per day and it's infrastructure. That makes no sense. — Max Barry

I want to talk about faith. It's not about whether something is true, or-or-or based in fact or reality or the laws of physics or nature or even basic common sense. It's about whether or not we're dumb enough to believe in it that matters. Oh, folks, who the hell am I to say that there is no God? Who am I? Or to say that anybody's belief in the church doesn't make their life better? Maybe it does. Or that this man, Dr. Jinx - who am I to say that he can't cure diseases with his sorcery? I don't know. I say maybe he can. And I believe that maybe he can.

Ladies and gentlemen, if we believe... if we just believe... then we can do anything!

Oh, yeah, ladies and gentlemen. I feel it now! Do you feel it? Do you feel the spirit? Do you feel the invisible things around you that don't really exist? Oh, it doesn't matter! — Dennis Reynolds

I think the dilemma exists because art, among all the other tidy categories, most closely resembles what it is like to be human. To be alive. It is our nature to be imperfect. To have uncategorized feelings and emotions. To make or do things that don't sometimes necessarily make sense. — Brene Brown

So what can I do now?" she spoke up a minute later.
"Nothing," I said. "Just think about what comes before words. You owe that to the dead. As time goes on, you'll understand. What lasts, lasts; what doesn't, doesn't. Time solves most things. And what time can't solve, you have to solve yourself. Is that too much to ask?"
"A little," she said, trying to smile.
"Well, of course it is," I said, trying to smile too.
"I doubt that this makes sense to most people. But I think I'm right. People die all the time. Life is a lot more fragile than we think. So you should treat others in a way that leaves no regrets. Fairly, and if posible, sincerely. It's too easy not to make the effort, then weep and wring your hands after the person dies. Personally, I don't buy it."
Yuki leaned against the car door. "But that's real hard, isn't it?" she said.
"Real hard," I said. "But it's worth trying for. — Haruki Murakami

That's where it all begins. That's where we all get screwed big time as we grow up. They tell us to think, but they don't really mean it. They only want us to think within the boundaries they define. The moment you start thinking for yourself - really thinking - so many things stop making any sense. And if you keep thinking, the whole world just falls apart. Nothing makes sense anymore. All rules, traditions, expectations - they all start looking so fake, so made up. You want just get rid of all this stuff and make things right. But the moment you say it, they tell you to shut up and be respectful. And eventually you understand that nobody wants you to really think for yourself.
Ray N. Kuili - Awakening — Ray N. Kuili

I need to tell the things that are important but which don't make sense in terms of the narrative, things that would destroy symmetry or narrative pace. This is my personal belief about what it means to write nonfiction. — Akhil Sharma

J. R. R. Tolkien, the near-universally-hailed father of modern epic fantasy, crafted his magnum opus The Lord of the Rings to explore the forces of creation as he saw them: God and country, race and class, journeying to war and returning home. I've heard it said that he was trying to create some kind of original British mythology using the structure of other cultures' myths, and maybe that was true. I don't know. What I see, when I read his work, is a man trying desperately to dream.
Dreaming is impossible without myths. If we don't have enough myths of our own, we'll latch onto those of others - even if those myths make us believe terrible or false things about ourselves. Tolkien understood this, I think because it's human nature. Call it the superego, call it common sense, call it pragmatism, call it learned helplessness, but the mind craves boundaries. Depending on the myths we believe in, those boundaries can be magnificently vast, or crushingly tight. — N.K. Jemisin

If there was a God he reasoned it would have the same relation to us as we have to blades of grass. Do we make them grow? Yes in the sense that we water the lawn. Do we care for them and worry over them? Again as a lawn but not as individual blades. We don't give them names. We just want them to look nice and green. A God who created the earth would want it to look nice an blue from space. He would sit back after a long day of creating things and think to himself now that's what a planet should look like. — Tom Lichtenberg

You sense my loneliness, ( ... ) my bitterness at being shut out of life. My bitterness that I'm evil, that I don't deserve to be loved and yet I need love hungrily. My horror that I can never reveal myself to mortals. But these things don't stop me, Mother. I'm too strong for them to stop me. As you said yourself once, I am very good at being what I am. These things merely now and then make me suffer, that's all — Anne Rice

Dreams are important to me because they are so irrational. I'm attracted to things which seem to fit together but don't in fact make any sense. Dreams didn't really have a lot to do with the novel whereas "The Adventuress," which was my first visual book, is almost entirely based on dreams. I had ten more or less random drawings and then I thought well, I'll make a plot that connects all of them. "The Three Incestuous Sisters" was kind of the same. The three characters appeared in a dream and I knew who they were. — Audrey Niffenegger

I don't know why, precisely. I believe we were in need of a change. We needed to do things for ourselves. Does that make any sense? To break your own ground and know it's yours, free and clear. Nothing taken for granted. — Eowyn Ivey

I had more to say," Sin said, still looking frustrated. "But it doesn't come out right when I try. I always say the wrong things."
Boyd nodded but he was so caught by their proximity, by the green of Sin's eyes, that at first he struggled with his own words.
"It's alright," he said at last. "As long you don't hate me, it's enough."
"That is not enough," Sin growled. "Not by a goddamn long shot. You just have no idea, Boyd. No fucking clue."
"About what?"
"Everything. Why I acted the way I did ... Why I was so pissed off. It will never make any sense to you because I don't know how to explain."
"So try," Boyd pressed. "Please."
"I don't know how. — Ais

That's what poetic speech is for
for the things that are true but don't make sense. — Joe Hill

You're not as cold as you pretend to be,' she said. 'I think your doors open in different places, that's all. Most people just don't know how to get in to you. They knock and they knock where the door is supposed to be, but it's a blank wall. But you're there. I've watched you. I've seen you do some awfully cold things warmly and some warm things coldly. Or does that make sense? — Evan S. Connell

Everything had to be in order for you, everything had to make sense. I hope you've learned that some things don't make sense, no matter how hard you try to make sense of them. — Angela Benson

How do you wake up? It was one thing to know that you had been asleep all your life, but something else to wake up from it, to find out you were really alive and it wasn't anybody's fault but your own. Of course that was the problem.

All right. Everything is a dream. Nothing hangs together. You move from one dream to another and there is no reason for the change. Your eyes see things and your ears hear, but nothing has any reason behind it. It would be easier to believe in God. Then you could wake up and yawn and stretch and grin at a world that was put together on a plan of mercy and death, punishment for evil, joy for good, and if the game was crazy at least it had rules. But that didn't make sense. It had never made any sense. The trouble was, now that he was not asleep and not awake, what he saw and heard didn't make sense either.

Mishmash, he thought. You know enough to know how you feel is senseless, but you don't know enough to know why. — Don Carpenter

I've figured out that I don't want to spend all of my spare time trying to make money. But, with things like fame or internet presence - things you cannot cash in at the bank - there is still a sense that more is better and that your career should be following a certain trajectory. — Erika M. Anderson

You've always lived here, right?" Sarah asked.
"Except for the years I went to college."
"Didn't you ever want to move away? To experience something new?"
"Like bistros?"
She nudged him playfully with her elbow. "No, not just that. Cities have a vibrancy, a sense of excitement that you can't find in a small town."
"I don't doubt it. But to be honest, I've never been interested in things like that. I don't need those things to make me happy. A nice quiet place to unwind at the end of the day, beautiful views, a few good friends. What else is there? — Nicholas Sparks

Backstage, Willem is thinking about accidents again. And things that seemingly don't make sense, except they do. Like right out there in the fifth row. All of them, together. That makes sense. — Gayle Forman

I write to make sense of things that don't make sense to me. — Daphne Gottlieb

There are many ideas within Christian spirituality that contradict the facts of reality as I understand them. A statement like this offends some Christians because they believe if aspects of their faith do not obey the facts of reality, they are not true. But I think there are all sorts of things our hearts believe that don't make any sense to our heads. — Donald Miller

Do the things that make perfect sense to you, [and] don't be afraid to shout it from the mountain tops just because it's outside the box or against the grain in your industry. More often than not, you're probably going to be right. — Mark Cuban

If the universe was scientific and just left to itself, then we'd have statistical probabilities to rely on. But once people are involved it sometimes becomes much more problematic because they're erratic. People do crazy things that don't make sense. — Sara Sheridan