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Angst Quotes

Browse 355 quotes about Angst.

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Angst Quotes

“Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortable as possible? What should a story seek to emulate, Augustus? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether—to borrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered sixteeen-year-olds you no doubt revile—there is a point to it all.”

GivingShouldYearsHumansMeanArtStoriesValuesUniverseCoursesGivenLinesStruggleDoubtArmsComfortableAskingFinalsValuablePassingPassingsPhrasesNo DoubtInquiryFleetingAlarmsAngstFutilityEmulateInterrogationAugustusWhat It Means To Be HumanMorphine
Author:John Green
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“Love is ease, love is comfort, love is support and respect. Love is not punishing or controlling. Love lets you grow and breathe. Love's passion is only good passion -- swirling-leaves-on-a-fall-day passion, a-sky-full-of-magnificent-stars passion -- not angst and anxiety. Love is not hurt and harm. Love is never unsafe. Love is sleeping like puzzle pieces. It's your own garden you protect; it's a field of wildflowers you move about in both freely and together.”

TogetherMovingFallPassionStarsGrowsHurtSleepLove IsSupportPiecesSkyFieldsComfortProtectAnxietyGardenBreatheHarmEaseMagnificentPuzzlesAngstUnsafeWildflowersLove RespectPuzzle Piece
Author:Deb Caletti
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“Emptiness and boredom: what an understatement. What I felt was complete desolation. Desolation, despair, and depression. Isn't there some other way to look at this? After all, angst of these dimensions is a luxury item. You need to be well fed, clothes, and housed to have time for this much self-pity.”

WayNeedsWellsLooksSelfFeltDespairClothesPityLuxuryBoredomDimensionsEmptinessFedsItemsAngstSelf PityDesolationUnderstatementLuxury Items
Author:Susanna Kaysen
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“I felt despair. The word’s overused and banalified now, despair, but it’s a serious word, and I’m using it seriously. For me it denotes a simple admixture — a weird yearning for death combined with a crushing sense of my own smallness and futility that presents as a fear of death. It’s maybe close to what people call dread or angst. But it’s not these things, quite. It’s more like wanting to die in order to escape the unbearable feeling of becoming aware that I’m small and weak and selfish and going without any doubt at all to die. It’s wanting to jump overboard.”

PeopleFeelingsOrderDiesFeltMy OwnSimpleDoubtSeriousBecomingDespairWeakSelfishCrushYearningDreadFear Of DeathUnbearableAngstFutilityWanting To DieSmallnessOverboardOverused
Author:David Foster Wallace
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“Compare the emotional vocabulary available to a leader (confidence, satisfaction, indignation) with the emotions not permitted (regret, embarrassment, dread, angst, mortification, anger, surprise, wonder, doubt), and it becomes apparent why perfectly normal people, upon entering public life, transform into cartoons - because they are not free to express what a normal person would feel in their situation.”

PeopleFeelsPersonsPoliticalPoliticsEmotionSituationLeaderWonderDoubtEmotionalRegretPoliticianNormalSurpriseSatisfactionAvailableCompareDreadCartoonEnteringVocabularyEmbarrassmentAngstPublic LifeIndignationMortificationPerfectly Normal
Author:John MacLachlan Gray
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“Well, you know, there's depression and depression. What I mean by depression in my own case is that depression isn't just the blues. It's not just like I have a hangover in the weekend ... the girl didn't show up or something like that. It isn't that. It's not really depression, it's a kind of mental violence which stops you from functioning properly from one moment to the next. You lose something somewhere and suddenly you're gripped by a kind of angst of the heart and of the spirit.”

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Author:Leonard Cohen
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“Gary Shteyngart has written a memoir for the ages. I spat laughter on the first page and closed the last with wet eyes. Un-put-down-able in the day and a half I spent reading it, Little Failure is a window into immigrant agony and ambition, Jewish angst, and anybody's desperate need for a tribe. Readers who've fallen for Shteyngart's antics on the page will relish the trademark humor. But here it's laden and leavened with a deep, consequential, psychological journey. Brave and unflinching, Little Failure is his best book to date”

NeedsFirstsLittlesBookEyeAgeAbleLastsReadingHalfWrittenJourneyReaderAmbitionPagesLaughterWindowBraveMemoirPsychologicalFallenDesperateImmigrantsWetAgonyTribesAngstRelishGaryTrademarksSpatsAnticsWet Eyes
Author:Mary Karr
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“Everything Brecht wrote—plays, dialogues, and poetry—was his attempt to clarify the inner contradictions not only of the capitalism and fascism of his times, but also of the communism that was always disappointing his deepest hopes. In a book that makes Brecht’s struggle to reveal these hidden contradictions its central theme, Glahn issues, by implication, a call to arms to today’s artists—who are faced with a world that seems to defy attempts to treat the global crisis with an art that is rarely more than notes on ‘local’ angst.”

WorldArtBookPlaySeemsTodayArtistStruggleIssuesArmsCapitalismTreatsCrisisNotesLocalsDialogueCommunismThemeContradictionFascismImplicationsAngstDisappointingBrecht
Author:Richard Foreman
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“Our lazy embrace of Stewart and Colbert is a testament to our own impoverished comic standards. We have come to accept coy mockery as genuine subversion and snarky mimesis as originality. It would be more accurate to describe our golden age of political comedy as the peak output of a lucrative corporate plantation whose chief export is a cheap and powerful opiate for progressive angst and rage.”

Would BeAgePoliticalPowerfulAcceptingComedyStandardsEmbraceRageGenuineGoldenChiefsComicCorporateLazyProgressiveOriginalityAccurateTestamentAngstMockeryOutputGolden AgeOpiatesPlantationsSubversionMimesis
Author:Steve Almond
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“There is really a je ne sais quoi about turkey cooking - the air of festivity, the family squabbles, the constant basting - that does not apply to the turkey breast, which is, really, a convenience of food... A turkey without seasonal angst is like a baseball game without a national anthem, a winter without snow, a birthday party without candles.”

DoeGamesPartyAirBaseballCookingConstantWinterSnowBreastsCandleTurkeysFunny InspirationalConvenienceAngstAnthemBaseball GamesBirthday PartyNational AnthemFestivitiesSquabbles
Author:Laurie Colwin
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“As you know, shibumi has to do with great refinement underlying commonplace appearances. It is a statement so correct that it does not have to be bold, so poignant it does not have to be pretty, so true it does not have to be real. Shibumi is understanding, rather than knowledge. Eloquent silence. In demeanor, it is modesty without pudency. In art, where the spirit of shibumi takes the form of sabi, it is elegant simplicity, articulate brevity. In philosophy, where shibumi emerges as wabi, it is spiritual tranquility that is not passive; it is being without the angst of becoming.”

KnowsDoeArtRealPhilosophySpiritualFormSpiritUnderstandingSilenceBecomingSimplicityAppearanceStatementsBeing RealModestyPassiveTranquilityElegantCommonplaceAngstEloquentRefinementBrevityPoignantDemeanor
Book:Shibumi: A Novel
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“First, you hand over some basics-overwhelming joy, existential angst, a giving-in to desire, etc. And then you promise to withstand talking idly about the weather, to encourage cliché, to uphold the virtues of average. You hand over the need to be understood and, in return, you get a bar of Normal soap. And you can wash in it and be daily reborn to a safe world of modest, enduring love or, at least, mild, well-mannered bonding.”

WorldLoveNeedsGivingFirstsWellsHandsAgeJoyDesireTalkingVirtueReturnPromiseSafeNormalUnderstoodEndureAverageBarsWeatherEtcOverwhelmingExistentialModestSoapAngstBasicsRebornBondingGiving InExistential AngstWell ManneredEnduring Love
Author:Julianna Baggott
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“And whatever their publicized angst over Saddam Hussein's 'weapons of mass destruction,' American and British authorities were also concerned about violence in an area that harbors a resource indispensable for the functioning of the word economy. I am saddened that it is politically inconvenient to acknowledge what everyone knows: the Iraq war is largely about oil.”

KnowsWarEconomyViolenceAuthorityWeaponsMassResourcesAreasConcernedDestructionIraqBritishOilAcknowledgeIndispensableSaddamHusseinHarborsAngstWeapons Of Mass DestructionMass DestructionIraq WarInconvenientSaddened
Author:Alan Greenspan
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“Nothing seems to matter quite as much. I no longer think about death in the concentrated way I once did. I don't know? you get so old and you sort of give up in some way. You've had your period of angst, your period of religious desperation, and you've arrived at a philosophical position where you don't need, or you can't bear, to look at it.”

ThinkingKnowsWayNeedsGivingLooksMatterSeemsAgeReligiousPositionBearsPeriodsGiving UpPhilosophicalDesperationAngst
Author:John Updike
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