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W Quotes

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All W Quotes

“Why do you love the woman you're in love with? Because she is. And that, after all, is God's own definition of Himself; I am that I am. The girl is who she is. Some of her isness spills over and impregnates the entire universe. Objects and events cease to be mere representations of classes and become their own uniqueness; cease to be illustrations of verbal abstractions and become fully concrete. Then you stop being in love, and the universe collapses, with an almost audible squeak of derision, into its normal insignificance.”

“Why do you need worldly things to define you? Why do you need a rank or a status to tell others who you are? Why concern yourself with the capricious opinions of others who are less impressed with who you really are and more impressed by the carefully crafted image you present to them - an image that is entirely surface with no inherent value? Take away the things and the status and see who notices you.”

“Why do you never find anything written about that idiosyncratic thought you advert to, about your fascination with something no one else understands? Because it is up to you. There is something you find interesting, for a reason hard to explain. It is hard to explain because you have never read it on any page; there you begin. You were made and set here to give voice to this, your own astonishment.”

“Why do you paint, Akram?” I asked. “What—” “Close your eyes, Sebastian,” he said, stopping me. “Just for a minute, close them and tell me what you see.” I did as he asked and answered, “Nothing, just black.” He tilted my head a bit to the west. “Open them now and find the blessing of vision. This abundance, the explosion, the mixture of colors, the movement, life passing by… See the sun setting? What colors can you find in the sea? Surely there are blue and gray, but don’t you also see that darker gray, light green, even black? Look at the hues of the sun drowning in the sea, melting in oranges, reds, purples. Look at those trees over there. Look at the waves, at me, at your hands, the eyes of your friends. Now, must you still ask me why I paint?” Akram replied. He then left me and walked to the tip of the yacht to enjoy the sunset and the breeze. “Artists,” I mumbled to myself.”

“Why do you people want to continue to import people that are going to end up placing a burden on our population? Why? If we're going to have an immigration policy, why don't we seek the best? Why do you people purposely want to go out and bring people in who are gonna end up being a burden? Now, you can define that as not learning English, not being able to have a job, being on the social safety welfare net, however you want to define it. But that's what Donald Trump means, because that's precisely what the Democrats want to do.”

“Why do you perversely follow your flesh? Turn back, and let your flesh follow you. Whatever you perceive through her, you perceive in part. You do not know the whole, of which these are the parts; nevertheless, the parts give you pleasure. But if your fleshly sense were capable of comprehending the whole, and had not, being itself a part of the whole, been confined within its right and proper limit - that being a punishment proportionate to your crime - you would wish all that exists in the present to pass away, so that you could derive still more pleasure from the totality of things. The very words we speak you hear by means of the same carnal sense, and you do not wish the syllables to stand still but to pass away swiftly, so that others may come and you may hear the whole. Likewise all the constituent parts that make up one thing (even though they do not all simultaneously constitute it) give more pleasure as a totality than they do individually, if it is possible to perceive them as a totality. But he who made them is better by far than them all, and it is he that is our God, who does not pass away, nor does anything take his place.”

“Why do you play such dreary music on Saturday afternoon, when tired mortally tired I long for a little reminder of immortal energy? All week long while I trudge fatiguingly from desk to desk in the museum you spill your miracles of Grieg and Honegger on shut-ins. Am I not shut in too, and after a week of work don’t I deserve Prokofieff? Well, I have my beautiful de Kooning to aspire to. I think it has an orange bed in it, more than the ear can hold.”

“Why do you pray?" he asked me, after a moment. Why did I pray? A strange question. Why did I live? Why did I breathe? "I don't know why," I said, even more disturbed and ill at ease. "I don't know why." After that day I saw him often. He explained to me with great insistence that every question possessed a power that did not lie in the answer. "Man raises himself toward God by the questions he asks Him," he was fond of repeating. "That is the true dialogue. Man questions God and God answers. But we don't understand His answers. We can't understand them. Because they come from the depths of the soul, and they stay there until death. You will find the true answers, Eliezer, only within yourself!" "And why do you pray, Moshe?" I asked him. "I pray to the God within me that He will give me the strength to ask Him the right questions.”