Nic Pizzolatto Quotes

The philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche once wrote that when you look into the darkness of the abyss the abyss looks into you. Probably no other line or thought more inspires or informs my work.

I really believe that 'Saw' makes us stop and think and question our motives and what we're doing here on Earth.

Existential philosophy, poetry and art - just like sadness - were all unavoidable to a tender young man in the meat works.

My favorite Swamp Thing stories have always been about a man wrestling with monsters both internal and external.

When you stare into an abyss for a long time, the abyss also stares into you.

I like writing about what to me are like questions that I have about myself and the human condition. I find quantum physics fascinating, so I like to write about that, and I like things that make me laugh.

There are metaphysical problems, problems of human existence, that philosophy has never known how to grasp in all their concreteness and that only the novel can seize.

If I had to summarize, most broadly, my concerns as a writer, I'd say the question 'How then must we live?' is at the heart of it, for me.

Why are we here? Where do we come from? Traditionally, these are questions for philosophy, but philosophy is dead.

Judging whether life is or is not worth living amounts to answering the fundamental question of philosophy.

There is no explanation for evil. It must be looked upon as a necessary part of the order of the universe. To ignore it is childish, to bewail it senseless.

The ancient Greeks were the first ones to say an unexamined life is not worth living. They don't tell you of course what we found out, an examined life not that fascinating either.

Challenging the meaning of life is the truest expression of the state of being human.

There's something hopeful about 'Endgame.' Beckett strips everything away and asks what remains. There's this surgical dissection of the soul, but at the bottom, you find shafts of light.

Is life worth living? This is a question for an embryo not for a man.

The proper study of Mankind is Man.

I can get very philosophical and ask the questions Keats was asking as a young guy. What are we here for? What's a soul? What's it all about? What is thinking about, imagination?

The desire to live in our imagination is driven by this suspicion that we're disembodied sensibilities cobbled into our bodies. That idea has infused most of human thought since the very beginning.

Any art worthy of its name should address 'life', 'man', 'nature', 'death' and 'tragedy'.

If human beings were shown what they're really like, they'd either kill one another as vermin, or hang themselves.

Initially, I studied philosophy, because it claimed to give you answers to the meaning of existence, but it didn't: It was basically a semantics game.

The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.

The two basic topics which fascinate me are 'What is reality?' and 'What constitutes the authentic human being?'

Probably the only way Woody Allen and I are similar is that he has a lot to say about Nietzsche.

I'm a Nietzschean scholar. I've read an immense amount about nihilism and existentialism.