Now, it is my contention that the deneuroticization of humanity requires a rehumanization of psychotherapy.
A poverty learned with the humble, the poor, the sick and all those who are on the existential outskirts of life. A theoretical poverty is no use to us. Poverty is learned by touching the flesh of the poor Christ, in the humble, in the poor, in the sick and in children.
I've changed over my writing life. If I can generalize, I would say that the more recent poems - believe it or not - are more pointedly political; although, if the earlier poems were more existential, they were still political; though, in their own way, had a complicated presence.
Start a 'Stop Doing' list. I'll leave it as an existential dilemma on whether to put that task on your To Do list
The internet takes a lot of the anxiety of life away. It's a kind of deity. You're never lonely. You're always distracted. If you spend enough time on it, there's not really that nagging sensation of existential despair; it erases it very effectively. And it's monolithic. And thanks to it, we've got the ways to linger there after death - your blog exists afterwards, your e-mail exists afterwards.
Nihilism is not an existential quandary but a speculative opportunity.
I feel there’s an existential angst among young people. I didn’t have that. They see enormous mountains, where I only saw one little hill to climb.
Literature is my life of course, but from an ontological point of view. From an existential point of view, I like being a teacher.
I am afraid of abandonment, and, if you will, in a really existential way, being exposed as a fraud. Everyone's afraid of it, and I definitely am. This is a fear that motivates. Oh, and heights. And getting stabbed.
There is also an underlying, less specific fear - what some might call an ontological or existential anxiety - that shrouds our days and seeps into our dreams. We feel empty and seek meaning. We feel empty and seek meaning. We yearn and know not what we yearn for. There is a black hole at the center of our understanding that engulfs and crushes our every attempt to explore it. Something is missing.
Psychotherapy is a cyclical process from isolation into relationship. It is cyclical because the patient, in terror of existential isolation, relates deeply and meaningfully to the therapist and then, strengthened by this encounter, is led back again to a confrontation with existential isolation.
. . . history has shown that the most terrible crimes against love have been committed in the name of fanatically defended doctrines.
I really like that homosexuality is a little bit of an existential puzzle.
Because imaginary time behaves like another direction in space, histories in imaginary time can be closed surfaces, like the surface of the Earth, with no [existential] beginning or end.
For existential mathematics, which does not exist, would probably propose this equation: the value of coincidence equals the degree of its improbability.
I had an existential crisis at the Oscars, sitting next to Sean Penn and Meryl Streep, and being like, 'What am I doing here? I don't belong here'. I felt like it could all be taken away.
Human beings are remarkably resilient. When you think about it, our species has been teetering upon the edge of the existential cliff since Hiroshima. In short, we endure.
In every nowhere town there are somewhere dreams
No existence can be validly fulfilled if it is limited to itself.
Pure, existential space was regularly winking at me, each time in a more impressive manner, and this sensation of total freedom attracted me so powerfully that I painted some monochrome surfaces just to 'see,' to 'see' with my own eyes what existential sensibility granted me: absolute freedom!