Anyone who has spent a few nights in a tent during a storm can tell you: The world doesn't care all that much if you live or die.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the indifference of the world towards individual existence, especially in the face of nature's power.
Anthony Doerr's quote serves as a stark reminder of the vastness and indifference of the world around us. When faced with the raw forces of nature, such as a storm, one can realize that life is fragile and that the world does not inherently value individual existence. This perspective can lead to a deeper understanding of our place in the universe and motivate us to appreciate life's moments more intensely.
In practice
In a discussion about resilience, one might quote this to emphasize the importance of realizing life's fragility.
The easier an experience, or the more entrenched, or the more familiar, the fainter our sensation of it becomes. This is true of chocolate and marriages and hometowns and narrative structures. Complexities wane, miracles become unremarkable, and if we're not careful, pretty soon we're gazing out at our lives as if through a burlap sack.
I used to think...that I had to be careful with how much I lived. As if life was a pocketful of coins. You only got so much and you didn't want to spend it all in one place...But now I know that life is the one thing in the world that never runs out. I might run out of mine, and you might run out of yours, but the world will never run out of life. And we're all very lucky to be part of something like that.
Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience--buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello--become new all over again.
I don't believe in reincarnation. I feel like we're here for such an appallingly brief period of time. I believe we each get this one trip, and if we're really, really fortunate, maybe we get 70 or 80 years on Earth.
My sister-in-law is a painter, and I'll say, how long did it take you to paint that painting. She'll say, It took me maybe three days, but it took me all my life to get the skills to paint that painting.
The preciousness of life and the changes of weather and the beauty of seasons - all those things have always sort of dazzled me.
All truth is crooked, time itself is a circle
One of the characteristics of the dream is that nothing surprises us in it. With no regret, we agree to live in it with strangers, completely cut off from our habits and friends.
There is no such thing as Freedom (though it is the most important condition of human life, after Humility, -which does not exist either). There is only Slavery (walls around one) and absence-of-Slavery (ability to walk in any direction, or to remain still).
His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with.
Retire at various times into the solitude of your own heart, even while outwardly engaged in discussions or transactions with others, and talk to God.
We are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind.
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