Trying To Make Sense Of Life Quotes & Sayings

I have this clutter of questions all churned together in my mind and they won't stop churning. I've found out too much and not enough. there are too many pieces that could go together too many ways and I can't stop shifting them around. There has to be some way it all makes sense and it doesn't yet."
"You're asking a lot of life if you want it to make sense."
Most of the time, Joliffe was of the same opinion, but he shook his head against it now like against a fly's buzz and said nothing, frowning at the pen he was still twirling.
Basset watched him a moment, then said,
"Well, if you can't let it go, go at it as if you were trying to make a story of all these pieces you have. Shift them around and fill the gaps until they make the sense you want. — Margaret Frazer

They wanted a list of symptoms: dizziness, blurred vision, palpitations. You could not say, it is a different life trying to nudge this one aside. I am meant to be living that different life. Who would understand that, if she could make no better sense of understanding it herself? — Jean Thompson

GK Chesterton once said that to criticise religion because it leads people to kill each other is like criticising love because it has the same effect. All the best things we have, when abused, will cause bad things to happen. The need for sacrifice, to obey, to make a gift of your life is in all of us and it's a deep thing. In the Islamic world today, people are trying to rejoin themselves to an antiquated and ancient faith and the result is massive violence when they encounter people who have not done that. We'd say that sense of sacrifice is good but only if you're sacrificing your own life; once you sacrifice another's life you've overstepped the mark. — Roger Scruton

Because that's what you do when something terrible happens. You go over and over every little thing, looking for clues, trying to find a pattern and a way to make sense out of the muddle and hurt. — Julia Green

For me, I can't understand something unless I've experienced it and I tend to be very judgmental by nature. But, it's very telling when you see the world from the other side of the lens because it opens the door to self-discovery. Perspective changes everything. I prefer empathy to sympathy if I have a choice. That's where the research comes in. I've packed a lot of life into the past few years trying to understand people and situations. Trying to make sense of my life. I have a lot to work through. My past is something that requires introspection and forgiveness. And that takes time. Research. When I feel like I've learned something about myself and grown as a person, I move on to the next journey. Hopefully with new perspective. — Kim Holden

Sometimes it's better to stop trying to make sense of things. Life isn't clear cut, there are always gray areas. — Alexandra Adornetto

This world is filled with things that will never make sense. Trying to make so much sense of them will only result in one thing: Spending the rest of your life trying to remember what you were like before any of it mattered. — Matthew Good

The Maze is a painting of the inside of my skull, which I painted when I was in England as a patient in Maudsley and Netherne psychiatric hospitals. It is a story of my life, well in the sense that people tell stories by the fireplace to entertain their guests, trying to make them accept you. In this case I wanted to be accepted, as an interesting specimen. — William Kurelek

Since I'm doing so much science, I think the reason these ideas have occurred to me and not to other people in music is simply the influence that science plays in my life: working in laboratories, thinking of models, hypothesis, putting things together, trying to make sense of it all and so forth. — Dave Soldier

Sometimes he thinks that if he could only trace the path of his life carefully enough, everything would become clear. The ways that he screwed up would make sense. He closes his eyes tightly. His life wasn't always a mistake, he thinks, and he breathes uncertainly for awhile, trying to find a pathway into unconsciousness, into sleep. — Dan Chaon

Nothing uniquely bad has happened to me in my personal life, but all the regular little bad things have accumulated to make me a neurotic person. And these adventures are my way of trying to make sense of that. — Jon Ronson

In trying to make the slave experience intimate, I hoped the sense of things being both under control and out of control would be persuasive throughout; that the order and quietitude of every day life would be violently disrupted by the chaos of the needy dead; that the herculean effort to forget would be threatened by memory desperate to stay alive. To render enslavement as a personal experience, language must first get out of the way. — Toni Morrison

She walked through the underpass at the Elephant and Castle, enjoying the sense that nothing really mattered, not the truth about the past, nor whether they believed her, not Winnie's drinking or Vik's ultimatum. It was the perfect place to escape from a painful past. She could waste years at home trying to make sense of a random series of events. There was no meaning, no lessons to be learned, no moral - none of it meant anything. She could spend her entire life trying to weave meaning into it, like compulsive gamblers and their secret schema. Nothing mattered, really, because an anonymous city is the moral equivalent of a darkened room. She understood why Ann had come here and stayed here and died here. It wouldn't be hard. All she had to do was let go of home. She would phone Leslie and Liam sometimes, say she was fine, fine, let the calls get farther apart, make up a life for herself and they'd finally forget. — Denise Mina

I'm not a wife, or a mother, or a pillar of the ton," she waved her unharmed arm as though the life she was describing was just beyond the room. "I'm invisible. So, why not stop being such a craven wallflower and start trying all the things that I've always dreamed of doing? Why not go to taverns adn drink scotch and fence? I confess, those things have been much more interesting than all the loathsome teas and balls and needlepoint with which I have traditionally occupied my time." She met his gaze again. "Does this make sense?"
He nodded seriously. "It does. You're trying to find Callie. — Sarah MacLean

If we are on the outside, we assume a conspiracy is the perfect working of a scheme. Silent nameless men with unadorned hearts. A conspiracy is everything that ordinary life is not. It's the inside game, cold, sure, undistracted, forever closed off to us. We are the flawed ones, the innocents, trying to make some rough sense of the daily jostle. Conspirators have a logic and a daring beyond our reach. All conspiracies are the same taut story of men who find coherence in some criminal act. — Don DeLillo

No matter who weaves in and out of your life, regardless of the quality of those deep friendships and familyships, I'm the only common denominator at this point who's been with me the whole time. And there's this sense of trying to make sense of that ultimate solitude. It's not a negative or even a positive. It's just a fact. — Feist

In painting I try to make some logic out of the world that has been given to me in chaos. I have a very pretentious idea that I want to make life, I want to make sense out of it. The fact that I am doomed to failure - that doesn't deter me in the least. — Grace Hartigan

I think my relationship with life has changed - I want to make more complex images than before. Complex in the sense that I try to put in a lot of information, sometimes contradictory information. — Luis Gonzalez

But as I began to write this book, I realised that without the whole truth my life would have no power, no real meaning. With the help of my mother, the memories of our lives in North Korea and China cane back to me like scenes from a forgotten nightmare. Some of the images reappeared with a terrible clarity; others were hazy, or scrambled like a deck of cards spilled on the floor. The process of writing has been the process of remembering, and of trying to make sense out of those memories. — Yeonmi Park

A rejected infant will often die, even if its basic needs are met. A rejected child will spend his whole life trying to please everyone else, and never please himself. A rejected woman will often cheat, just to feel desirable. A rejected man will rarely try again, no matter how lonely he is. A rejected people will convince themselves they deserve it, if only to make sense of a senseless world. I'm — Amy Harmon

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

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

Don't have work-life balance - at least in the sense of trying to escape from work so you can have a life. Work should be fun - so make work enjoyable and satisfying for everyone - among other reasons because it pays off. — Don Tapscott

I want to sleep. To find a safe place somewhere, and close my eyes, and rest, like an animal.
That is what I am. An animal. Living from moment to moment, day to day, trying to make sense of the world in which I find myself. — S.J. Watson

Life is too hard to behave normal all the time. Just the other day my mom told me I should learn to behave more neurotypically because then I would make more friends. This attitude is truly not great -- insisting that I behave in a way that makes no sense to me. This illustrates the hopelessness of trying to be your own person because this means you must behave like everyone else to be accepted. Being different is not seen as a positive trait. I feel if I have to wear a different face, then I will attract people I don't care to know. — Jeremy Sicile-Kira

I try to make sense of life. I try to keep myself open to people and to laughter and to love and to have faith. — Thea Bowman

The thing is, I like rules. They make me feel safe. The predictability of my boring life makes everything make sense. I guess that makes me a freak but I'm okay with that. You get to a certain point and you just realize there's no use in trying to pretend you're normal. — Amy Reed

Were all trying to find meaning to make sense of our realities; in search of happiness within,
Without realising our happiness within; is the only reality that gives life a meaning. — Nikki Rowe

You've had a whole life, a whole story, and I've come in late. I'm only trying to make sense of things. Make sense of you. — M.L. Stedman

I don't really think it comes as a shock to every writer if somebody in their family is mad at them. Yes, it's very upsetting. But it's inherent in the process of trying to make sense of one's life, which is what I think is perhaps at the bottom of writing at all. — Anne Roiphe

What a writer does is to try to make sense of life. I think that's what writing is, I think that's what painting is. It's seeking that thread of order and logic in the disorder, and the incredible waste and marvelous profligate character of life. What all artists are trying to do is to make sense of life. — Nadine Gordimer

I heard my old friend Clem's voice coming back to me through the dimness of thirty years: "I see you coming here trying to make sense where there is no sense. Try just living in it. Respond, alter, see what happens." I thought of the African way of perceiving life, as experience to be lived rather than as problem to be solved. — Audre Lorde

... and left decimated. Not for myself, but for all the single women out there trying to date. I wanted to run to the top of the Empire State Building and make an announcement to all of them to let them know they are worth so much more than this. That they don't need to wrangle some warm body to sit next to them just so they aren't alone on holidays. That they should never let a magazine or dating site or matchmaker monster tell them they're in a lower bracket of desirability because of their age or weight or face or sense of humor. — Amy Schumer

In a sense, you're always mythologizing your life; it's always an effort to make yourself epic. At least in fiction you can lie and sort of justify your delusion about your "epicness." But when you're writing a memoir, you're trying to make your life epic and it's not - nobody's life is. — Sherman Alexie

It is 2:06 am, one of 1488 nights that I lie awake trying to make sense of it all, trying to find an ounce of inspiration so I can convert it to a pound of energy - Energy so needed to just win the next day. — JohnA Passaro

I want you to remember something. Zo. It's important, and it'll make more sense when you have yourself together again. I'm gonna leave here and get another chance at life.You're gonna be a big, famous vamp High Priestess. That means you're gonna live like a gazillion years. I'll find you again. Even if it takes a hundred of those years. I promise you, Zoey Redbird, we'll be together again." Heath pulled her into his arms and kissed her trying through touch to show her that his love was never-ending. When he finally forced himself to let her go, he thought he saw understanding in her haunted, shocked gaze. "I'll love you forever, Zo."
Then Heath turned and walked away from his true love. The air before him opened, curtainlike, and he stepped from one realm to another and disappeared completely. — P.C. Cast

Shoes would interfere with her conversation, for she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her complicity. We all are, I suppose. Trying to invent our version of the story. All human odes are essentially one, My life; what I stole from history, and how I live with it. — Barbara Kingsolver

You just become adaptable and try to lead a good life in ways that make sense, regardless. Because I know at the end of it, if I'm going to meet Jesus or Allah or Buddha, I'm going to be all right. — Neil Peart

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

He was trying to make us think about how life is hard and people suffer in all sorts of ways without our adding to their suffering to satisfy our sense of vengeance, but I sort of don't think that the quote holds up in the real world, where literature and schooling and philosophy and morality don't exist, because Asher and Linda and so many other culpable people seem to be fine - functioning exceptionally well within the world even - while I'm under a disgusting bridge about to put a hole in my skull. — Matthew Quick

I remember somebody telling me they had been to Africa, and they were asking the people of a local tribe about their spirituality. The tribesman couldn't make sense of the word 'spirituality.' And so the visitor kept trying to explain what they meant by spirituality, and finally the man said, 'Oh, we call that life.'" Shepherd — Katherine Ozment

It seems that rather than abandon their worldview, many young people are abandoning their lives altogether. I am disturbed to see the number of suicides and suicide attempts by those between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five. Many of their suicide notes report they had lost meaning, purpose and a sense that life held any value.

This is no longer just about philosophy. This is about the very real lives we are all trying to make sense of here on Earth. — Jon Morrison

Her husband once said that he believed some sort of mathematical equation could be applied to life - since the longer you lived, the greater its seeming velocity. She always attributed this to familiarity. If you kept the same habits - and if you lived in the same place, worked in the same place - then you no longer spent a lot of time noticing. Noticing things - and trying to make sense of them - is what makes time remarkable. Otherwise, life blurs by, as it does now, so that she has difficulty keeping track of time at all, one day evaporating into the next. — Benjamin Percy

It was about everything. About life and death, and white and black and gray. It was about having to be tough when you weren't used to it. About having to grow when you'd thought you were done growing. In the back of my head, I knew what I'd said didn't make any damn sense. But how could I explain? How could I begin to tell him that I had lost a part of myself with my brother's death, and I was trying so hard to keep what I had left together with duct tape and paper clips? — Mariana Zapata

I've never believed much in that holding hands kind of love. I've always thought that love is about two different personalities trying to confront life, trying to make sense of their responsibilities, to themselves, to each other, and to the wider society. — Alan Bates

I believe that some of my best images have [the] ambiguity which is an essence of life. In this sense I am not interested in trying desperately to make Art but I am interested in relating to the marvelous extravagance of Life. — John Gutmann