James Mercer Quotes

I, at the age of 17 or 18 as a medical student, suddenly came up against a problem: 'What am I? What is the meaning of my existence as I experience it?'

I think essentially the meaning of life is probably the journey and not really any one thing or an outcome or a result.

The business of living - that's your artwork, and the process of that is finding out who you are, what it all means.

Fighting for identity is something that is very much in my life.

I feel like every movie, I've learned more and more about what I think of the world and what I'm trying to figure out.

After reaching 50, I began to wonder what the root of life is.

Without knowing what I am and why I am here, life is impossible.

Many people in their teens wonder about these big questions - what's the meaning of life, what are we doing here - then somewhere in their 20s, they seem to say, 'I'll just get married. I'll just have kids. I'll get back to that later.' But they never do. For me, it kept boiling.

I think that when you're young, you carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. You're anxious; the world seems like a scary place. You don't know where you're going to fit in, what you're gonna do with your life - but actually, life has a way of sorting itself out, and universal law takes over.

'The Wizard of Oz' is my favourite. It explains what life on this planet is about. Although Dorothy reaches Oz, she finds she had what she needed to go back to Kansas all along, but the Good Witch tells her that she had to learn it for herself. All of the answers to the meaning of life are there.

I think, no matter who you are, at some point in your life you've probably said, 'OK, well, who am I, and where do I fit in?'

I fell in love with this idea of an old school game character, like Donkey Kong, who looks like a very simple guy but is really wrestling with this very profound struggle: 'What's the meaning of life? What if I don't like this job I've been programmed to do?'

I think everybody can identify, you know, with this sort of struggle to decide for yourself who you are, you know, and what your place in life is.

Everyone goes through that time in their life when they're trying to figure out who they are, find their own purpose and their own way.

My life has a superb cast, but I cannot figure out the plot.

I don't know who I am but you know, life is for learning.

I've known both misery and happiness, lived in so many different skins it is impossible for one skin to claim me. And I have felt like a wayfarer on an alien planet at times - walking, running, wondering about what brought me to this particular place, and why. But once I was here the dreams started moving in, and I went about devouring them as they devoured me.

I have to convince myself that this is not a pointless life, even the body is telling me so.

I think most people struggle over a matter of years to find a satisfying way to live.

I've had the longest mid-life crisis ever.

The existence is a tremendous curiosity, with in the course of the years, the discovery of yourself in your inmost evolutions. With the age you feel better than you are, what you represent. Which means a little at the planet's scale.

Over and over again, I'm trying to express or communicate these big and small struggles to the world, and really to myself.

I used to think, 'How can I write my life story? I'm still living it.'

There was a period when I had a hard time reconciling all the different parts of me in a way that I thought would make sense to others.

Only then, approaching my fortieth birthday, I made philosophy my life's work.