Philip Seymour Hoffman Quotes

I can never say 'why' about anything I do. I suppose I can say 'how' and 'when' and 'what.' But 'why' is impenetrable to me.

The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery.

I like the unknown. I like mystery.

I'll never know everything. My life would be a lot worse if there was nothing I knew the answers about - and if there was nothing I didn't know the answers about.

Men are intrigued by anything they do not completly control.

The first thing you should know about people is that you don’t know the first thing about them.

Our ignorance can be divided into problems and mysteries. When we face a problem, we may not know its solution, but we have insight, increasing knowledge, and an inkling of what we are looking for. When we face a mystery, however, we can only stare in wonder and bewilderment, not knowing what an explanation would even look like.

Chekhov understood that people are mysterious and can't be reduced to what we nowadays call 'motivation.'

The mind loves the unknown. It loves images whose meaning is unknown, since the meaning of the mind itself is unknown.

We have learned how to do a lot of things. We must try to relearn why.

People need meanings to everything. People want you to intellectualize every choice you make.

Science is wonderfully equipped to answer the question 'How?' but it gets terribly confused when you ask the question 'Why?'

In order to have wisdom we must have ignorance.

Books say: she did this because. Life says: she did this. Books are where things are explained to you, life where things aren't.

The more things remain obscure and mysterious, the more they interest me. I even try to find mystery in things that have none.

There is really nothing more to say-except why. But since why is difficult to handle, one must take refuge in how.

There are many things that I don't understand.

I'm curious about people, and I'm curious about getting to the root of where they might be coming from.

I only work with people that are mysteries.

I love the unexplainable. It would be so boring to me if everything could be explained.

We have this desire for everything to be explained to us. But if you go through your daily actions, very little ends up having a written-down explanation for why things happen, or why people do specific things. So it made sense to me to reflect the human condition that not every action has an explanation. We act, and then later maybe come to an understanding about it, or maybe not.

Mystery is underrated, and understanding is overrated.

I want my life to be mystifying," she declared, although she didn't know what she meant.

It's better not to know so much about what things mean or how they might be interpreted or you'll be too afraid to let things keep happening. Psychology destroys the mystery, this kind of magic quality. It can be reduced to certain neuroses or certain things, and since it is now named and defined, it's lost its mystery and the potential for a vast, infinite experience.

You could know the what of something forever and never discover the why.