The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.
Interpretation
Life's significant moments often seem trivial at the time they happen.
In her quote, Curtis Sittenfeld reflects on how the most important events in life often go unnoticed in the moment because they do not match our expectations of what such moments should feel like. We are often distracted by mundane concerns, and when looking back, we realize that those seemingly small instances were actually profound experiences that shaped our lives.
In practice
In a graduation speech highlighting the importance of seemingly small moments in the journey of education.
She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.
Sometimes, there can be a slightly condescending assumption that anything unlikable about a female character is a mistake, as if they're a contestant in a beauty pageant and have to seem charming and upbeat all the time.
Is the depressing part that he's only half right - it's not that she doesn't need rescuing but that nobody else will be able to do it? She has always somehow known that she is the one who will have to rescue herself. Or maybe what's depressing is that this knowledge seems like it should make life easier, and instead it makes it harder.
i will live by the gun and die by the gun
Life's short, you know? Especially as an athlete. Your career is very short, and you use the opportunities that you have because you're not going to have them again.
Sometimes you dance with a partner, and sometimes you dance alone. But the important thing is to keep dancing.
Don't be so fast, you're all you've got.
Nothing is here to stay_x000D_ _x000D_ Everything has to begin and end_x000D_ _x000D_ A ship in a bottle won't sail_x000D_ _x000D_ All we can do is dream that the wind will blow us across the water_x000D_ _x000D_ A ship in a bottle set sail
Your life is much more important that you can imagine... it is your first treasure.
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