After adolescence, if one's life is sufficiently interesting, the desire to tell oneself stories diminishes.
Interpretation
As we grow older and our lives become more engaging, the need to create narratives for ourselves lessens.
Gore Vidal suggests that during our formative years, storytelling is a vital tool for understanding and interpreting our experiences. However, as we mature and our lives unfold in more captivating ways, the necessity to fabricate narratives about ourselves wanes, as reality becomes rich and interesting enough to live without embellishment.
In practice
In a motivational speech about growing up.
We must declare ourselves, become known; allow the world to discover this subterranean life of ours which connects kings and farm boys, artists and clerks. Let them see that the important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
American writers want to be not good but great; and so are neither.
Writing fiction has become a priestly business in countries that have lost their faith.
The important thing is not the object of love, but the emotion itself.
For the average American, freedom of speech is simply the freedom to repeat what everyone else is saying and no more.
Ayn Rand's 'philosophy' is nearly perfect in its immorality, which makes the size of her audience all the more ominous and symptomatic as we enter a curious new phase in our society.... To justify and extol human greed and egotism is to my mind not only immoral, but evil.
So may'st thou live, till like ripe fruit thou drop Into thy mother's lap.
There's so much spectating going on that a lot of us never get around to living.
Life is conspiring in your favor. It may not always look that way, but it is, I assure you. Everything that is happening, is happening just the wayit must, in order for you to have the opportunity tocreate the experience of your Self for which you yearn.
It is not enough to reach for the brass ring. You must also enjoy the merry go round.
I'm not the type of person who likes to look backwards. I've always felt compelled to move forward and I've never been one to dwell in the past. All the people I've met, all the places I've been, and all the things that I've done have simply been part of who I am.
You get into your late fifties, people start falling like flies all around you. I don't take life for granted any more. I'm really glad to be here.
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