It is an anxious, sometimes a dangerous thing to be a doll. Dolls cannot choose; they can only be chosen; they cannot 'do'; they can only be done by.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the limitations and lack of agency in being a doll, symbolizing those who exist to be shaped by others rather than taking action themselves.
Rumer Godden's quote highlights the vulnerability and helplessness of dolls, which serve as a metaphor for individuals who lack control over their own lives. It suggests that to be chosen rather than to choose can be a source of anxiety and danger, emphasizing the importance of agency and the power to take action in one's own life.
In practice
During a motivational speech about personal growth and overcoming adversity, this quote can be used to illustrate the importance of making choices in life.
A writer who has never explored words, who has never searched, seeded, sieved, sifted through his knowledge and memory...dictiona ries, thesaurus, poems, favorite paragraphs, to find the right word, is like someone owning a gold mine who has never mined it.
The life-converting experience is not the discovery that I have choices to make that determine the way I live out my existence, but the awareness that my that my existence itself is not in the center. Once I 'know' God, that is, once I experience God's love as the love in which all my human experiences are anchored, I can desire only one thing: to be in that love.
The hand is the visible part of the brain.
People to whom their daily life appears too empty and monotonous easily grow religious; this is comprehensible and excusable, only they have no right to demand religious sentiments from those whose daily life is not empty and monotonous.
Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood.
What countries must do to join the World Trade Organization is precisely what they must do to become productive and democratic: accept the rule of law, reduce corruption, and become open, accountable, and transparent.
I - and I still consider myself, I'm sorry to tell you, a Marxist and a Communist, but I couldn't help noticing how all the best Marxist analyses are always analyses of a failure.
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