We cannot get from anyone else the things we need to fill the endless terrible need, not to be dissolved, not to sink back into sand, heat, broom, air, thinnest air. And so we revolve around each other and our dreams collide. Look out the window in any weather. We are part of all that glamour, drama, change, and should not be ashamed.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of self-sufficiency and interconnectedness in our quest for fulfillment.
Ellen Gilchrist's quote reflects on the human experience of longing and the inherent need for connection with others, while also acknowledging the individuality of our dreams and aspirations. It suggests that, despite our struggles and desires, we are part of a larger tapestry of life, and we should embrace the complexities of our existence without shame. The imagery of elements like sand and air highlights our fragility and the constant interplay of dreams and realities among people.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about personal growth and the importance of embracing one's individuality.
How often I have tried to tell writing students that the first thing a writer must do is love the reader and wish the reader well. The writer must trust the reader to be at least as intelligent as he is. Only in such well wishing and trust, only when the writer feels he is writing a letter to a good friend, only then will the magic happen.
As long as we look to legislation to cure poverty or to abolish special privilege we are going to see poverty and special privilege grow
If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be the history of its successive regrets and its impotences.
People care more about being thought to have taste than about being thought either good, clever or amiable.
From childhood I had never believed in permanence, and yet I had longed for it. Always I was afraid of losing happiness. This month, next year...death was the only absolute value in my world. Lose life and one would lose nothing again forever.
exile is strangely compelling to think about but terrible to experience. It is the unhealable rift forced between a human being and a native place, between the self and its true home: its essential sadness can never be surmounted. And while it is true that literature and history contain heroic, romantic, glorious, even triumphant episodes in an exile’s life, these are no more than efforts meant to overcome the crippling sorrow of estrangement.
In the glad old days, before the rise of modern morbidities...it used to be thought a disadvantage to be misunderstood.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.