Suddenly Wheatley
Is standing beside you.
You've given me purpose!
I know what I'm for!
Is standing beside you.
You've given me purpose!
I know what I'm for!
— Wheatley, Portal 2: The (Unauthorized) Musical
"For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and a time to die..."
The wind is moving,
But I am standing still.
A life of pages
Waiting to be filled.
A heart that's hopeful,
A head that's full of dreams.
But this becoming
Is harder than it seems....
Feels like...I'm—
But I am standing still.
A life of pages
Waiting to be filled.
A heart that's hopeful,
A head that's full of dreams.
But this becoming
Is harder than it seems....
Feels like...I'm—
Looking for a reason!
Roaming through the night, to find
My place in this world!
My place in this world...!
My place in this world!
My place in this world...!
— Michael W Smith, "Place In This World"
Link: Gee, it sure is boring around here.
King Harkinian: Mah boy, this peace is what all true warriors strive for!
Link: I just wonder what Ganon's up to!
King Harkinian: Mah boy, this peace is what all true warriors strive for!
Link: I just wonder what Ganon's up to!
"Those whom the Gods wish to destroy, they first make bored."
"I realized the most painful thing... That in this world... my existence was not needed."
— Haku, Naruto
"What I am offering you, Mister Reese, is a purpose. More specifically, I'm offering you a job. A chance to help people."
— Harold Finch, Person of Interest
Finch: [getting treated for a gunshot wound] Why would you ever choose a career where this is an occupational hazard?
Reese: Well, I tried to quit, but some jackass told me I needed a purpose.
Reese: Well, I tried to quit, but some jackass told me I needed a purpose.
"Each of us, at some time in our lives, turns to someone - a father, a brother, a God - and asks, 'Why am I here? What was I meant to be?'"
— Spock, Star Trek: The Motion Picture
"I remember your kind, but you seem... different. Unfocused. Hungrier, somehow. I saw you before, but you haven't always seemed so desperate to feed. What is it that has changed? I think that people - living people - know too much. They have learned too much, and what they have not learned, they can create. I think that, perhaps, they don't need your lessons anymore. So, of course, you must make yourself a purpose. It is terrible to not have a purpose. It is death."
— A Mummy regarding the Begotten, Beast: The Primordial
I know what you're thinking, John, and you're quite mistaken. I'm not ignoring my current circumstances, nor am I dwelling on my past. I'm simply biding my time. I could salvage the transport for parts... making a deep-space signal beacon would be child's play. I could build a hundred things from that mound of Hynerian scrap outside. Trust me, John, if I decide to escape this frozen purgatory, nothing will stop me. I simply have nowhere to go and no one to go to... no purpose worthy of the effort.
— Scorpius, Farscape: Let Sleeping Dogs Lie
"Sometimes I do things I don't want to do, like I'm being controlled. I feel like if life was a video game, maybe I don't have a good player controlling me. I feel like a loser, but at other times I don't know what to do. I wish I did have someone controlling me, so I wouldn't feel so lost. I don't know what I want. All I know is, when I play video games, I feel like I have a purpose. Why can't life have that?"
— Blair Trigger (speaking with other characters), Final Deployment 4: Queen Battle Walkthrough
It was not considered the thing to look panicked or even especially concerned about graduation, but everything about the world after Brakebills felt dangerously vague and underthought to Quentin. The bored, bedraggled specters of Alice's parents haunted him. What was he going to do? I mean, what exactly? Every ambition he'd ever had in his life had been realized the day he was admitted to Brakebills, and he was struggling to formulate a new one with any kind of practical specificity. This wasn't Fillory, where there was some magical war to be fought. There was no Watcherwoman to be rooted out, no great evil to be vanquished, and without that everything else seemed so mundane and penny-ante.
The sheer predictability of life in an American suburb left me hoping— somewhat irresponsibly— for a hurricane or a tornado or something that would require us to all band together to survive. Something that would make us feel like a tribe. What I wanted wasn’t destruction and mayhem but the opposite: solidarity. I wanted the chance to prove my worth to my community and my peers, but I lived in a time and a place where nothing dangerous ever really happened. Surely this was new in the human experience, I thought. How do you become an adult in a society that doesn’t ask for sacrifice? How do you become a man in a world that doesn’t require courage?
— Sebastian Junger, "Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging"
" I need to find out who I am. To give the simplest of my actions a reason. I know by being in this world has some significance, but I'm afraid that when I found out what it is, it will be too late. In the meantime, I'm a vagabond. I keep traveling. Even when the earth sleeps, I keep traveling... chasing shadows."
—Keoma Shannon, Keoma
What did I want?
I wanted a Roc's egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword,. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get u feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a like wench for my droit du seigneur—I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.
I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.
I wanted Prestor John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be—instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.
I wanted a Roc's egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword,. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get u feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, then pick a like wench for my droit du seigneur—I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilting of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.
I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.
I wanted Prestor John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be—instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.
Otto: Grinaldi's the one that inspired me to become a magician one day.
Olive: I thought you wanted to become an Olympic speed skater.
Otto: That was on Monday.
Olive: What about tornado chaser?
Otto: That was on Tuesday. Today's Wednesday.
Olive: I thought you wanted to become an Olympic speed skater.
Otto: That was on Monday.
Olive: What about tornado chaser?
Otto: That was on Tuesday. Today's Wednesday.
Belkar: Is that what you think I want? To make your life harder? Really?
Roy: Yes! Yes, that is really what I think you want!
Belkar: Then the joke's on you, because I have no idea what I want!
Roy: Yes! Yes, that is really what I think you want!
Belkar: Then the joke's on you, because I have no idea what I want!
