Stanley Elkin Quotes

God asks no man whether he will accept life. That is not the choice. You must take it. The only choice is how.

Not on one strand are all life's jewels strung.

I don't believe that life is supposed to make you feel good, or make you feel miserable either. Life is just supposed to make you feel.

A man can look upon his life and accept it as good or evil; it is far, far harder for him to confess that it has been unimportant in the sum of things.

Much of the time life is a sort of rhythmic progression of three characters. If one tells oneself that life is like that, one feels it less arbitrary.

I'm not afraid of death. It's the stake one puts up in order to play the game of life.

Every life has its years in which one progresses as on a tedious and dusty street of poplars, without caring to know where he is.

The experience of life that you and I have is pretty much a jigsaw puzzle in the box: Day-to-day experiences of disconnected pieces that don't seem to justify the efforts we make each day.

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

We are involved in a life that passes understanding and our highest business is our daily life.

Understand life's mysteries - as mysteries to be lived.

There is only one meaning of life: the act of living itself.

You must understand the whole of life, not just one little part of it. That is why you must read, that is why you must look at the skies, that is why you must sing and dance, and write poems and suffer and understand, for all that is life.

When I'm lying in my bed I think about life and I think about death and neither one particularly appeals to me.

Everything has been figured out, except how to live.

If we knew the meaning to everything that is happening to us, then there would be no meaning.

I suppose there are times when I can't believe that I've lived the way that I have and done the things that I've done. Life's a joke anyway. It's all ridiculous. It's all so short.

'SoulPancake' is a website that I founded with a couple of friends, and it is for exploring life's big questions.

The why of why we are here is an intrigue for adolescents; the how is what must command the living.

I don't know how, where, and why the idea for 'Defending Your Life' began; the idea had been bouncing around for a while. Stories like that sort of have to bounce. They don't come out of nowhere. I went through my own period of life with sort of everything turning upside down, and wondering, 'Why is it this way?'

I learned early on that in the real world, the masks of tragedy and comedy adorn the proscenium of every life.

'Chhichhore' is not just a story, it is a journey that everyone goes through. The film showcases some of the most beautiful years of one's life, where friends become family and stay with you till you age.

I was always taught to be grateful, and so the question came early: What is there to be grateful for? Why is life supposed to be so good? That's still a question I try to answer all the time.

It's life, man, and life is never easy.

I am a greedy poet. I keep munching life all the time. Sweet, sour and bitter moments.