Matt de la Pena Quotes

To doubt God is to doubt one's own conscience, and in consequence, it would be to doubt everything; and then what is life for?

A psychoneurosis must be understood, ultimately, as the suffering of a soul which has not discovered its meaning.

I think that half of us feel fraudulent in our lives anyway. There's that strange disconnect of not really knowing what we're doing sometimes, or why it matters. It's our existential crisis.

I can see a version of my life where it all becomes meaningless. On a good day, writing seems noble. Other times, it's narcissistic and pointless.

We don't understand why we're here, no one's giving us an answer, religion is vague, your parents can't help because they're just people, and it's all terrible, and there's no meaning to anything.

Tintinnabulation is an area I sometimes wander into when I am searching for answers - in my life, my music, my work. In my dark hours, I have the certain feeling that everything outside this one thing has no meaning.

My life has no purpose, no direction, no aim, no meaning, and yet I'm happy. I can't figure it out. What am I doing right?

It's something that I had been pushing down my whole life. The search for meaning, I guess, the whispering of the soul.

I don't want to put meaning on what I do because I don't know what it is.

I think we all do: I think we wonder if we're supposed to be here, if we're doing the right thing, if we even want to be here. At least, I do all the time.

If I'm not fighting for a good reason, then your personal life starts to get messy, and it's like, 'What am I doing this for?'

Honesty is the best policy; the only way out is deeper in: a candid confrontation with existence is dizzying, liberating.

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.

We're all human so of course there are days when I'm feeling insecure. When that happens, I take time to reflect on how far I've come and how far I will continue to go - it helps me feel empowered and self-assured.

How important can it be that I suffer and think? My presence in this world will disturb a few tranquil lives and will unsettle the unconscious and pleasant naiveté of others. Although I feel that my tragedy is the greatest in history - greater than the fall of empires - I am nevertheless aware of my total insignificance. I am absolutely persuaded that I am nothing in this universe; yet I feel that mine is the only real existence.

Maybe life isn't meaningless...Maybe just YOUR life is meaningless

Besides, I can't get to where I want to go by conscious or unconscious suicide. I've got my strange little life to lead. Leading it the best I can - that's how I buy the ticket to where I want to be.

Often, warriors find their lives meaningless.

I hated myself and the world because I had failed to face and accept the limitations of my self and of life. In literature this refusal is called romanticism; in psychology, neurosis.

One half was sad because I had damaged my reputation. The other half was happy because I had damaged my reputation.

I’m me, and at the same time not me. That’s what it felt like. A very still, quiet feeling.

Even if I have hundreds of things to do, the disconnected feeling is still there because it is very hard to find a real purpose of life.

It's very easy in a way, horrible in some ways, but simply to give up the whole thing, to say, "Well, the hell with it, as far as I'm concerned life is pointless and [so] live the fullest, most successfully self-fulfilling life you can and let the rest go hang" - I've never reached that point in my life.

Hell, in my opinion, is never finding your true self and never living your own life or knowing who you are.

Self-awareness is a trait that not only makes us human but also paradoxically makes us want to be more than merely human. As I said in my BBC Reith Lectures, “Science tells us we are merely beasts, but we don’t feel like that. We feel like angels trapped inside the bodies of beasts, forever craving transcendence