Most animals are pragmatic about mysteries: If they run across something they don't understand, all they care about is whether it's edible and whether it's dangerous. Humans, on the other hand, are drawn to the mystery for its own sake.
Interpretation
This quote highlights the fundamental differences in how animals and humans perceive and engage with the unknown.
Tana French's quote suggests that while most animals approach situations through a lens of practicality, assessing whether new experiences are safe or beneficial, humans possess an intrinsic curiosity that drives them to explore mysteries regardless of the risks or rewards. This reflects not only our intelligence but also our emotional and intellectual complexity, as we seek understanding and meaning beyond mere survival.
In practice
Citing this quote in a discussion about the importance of curiosity in human nature.
I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them any time I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and farther, underground; out of sight and way beyond my control.
Over time, the ghosts of things that happened start to turn distant; once they've cut you a couple of million times, their edges blunt on your scar tissue, they wear thin. The ones that slice like razors forever are the ghosts of things that never got the chance to happen.
Don't get discouraged if you're hammering away at a sentence or a paragraph or a chapter, and it keeps coming out wrong. You're allowed to get it wrong, as many times as you need to; you only need to get it right once.
I wanted to tell her that being loved is a talent too, that it takes as much guts and as much work as loving; that some people, for whatever reason, never learn the knack
If you're writing a scene for a character with whom you disagree in every way, you still need to show how that character is absolutely justified in his or her own mind, or the scene will come across as being about the author's views rather than about the character's.
I had been right: freedom smelled like ozone and thunderstorms and gunpowder all at once, like snow and bonfires and cut grass, it tasted like seawater and oranges.
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
Long before the awakening of thought on earth, manifestations of cosmic energy must have been produced which have no parallel today.
When one begins to reflect on philosophy—then philosophy seems to us to be everything, like God, and love. It is a mystical, highly potent, penetrating idea—which ceaselessly drives us inward in all directions. The decision to do philosophy—to seek philosophy is the act of self-liberation—the thrust toward ourselves.
Is it not a species of blasphemy to call the New Testament revealed religion, when we see in it such contradictions and absurdities.
I love him who wants to create over and beyond himself and thus perishes.
Divine Nature gave the fields, human art built the cities.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.