Braininess is not attractive unless combined with some signs of elegance; class.
Interpretation
Intelligence can be appealing, but it must be accompanied by grace and sophistication to truly captivate others.
Alice Munro's quote suggests that while intelligence, or 'braininess', is valuable, it does not stand alone as a trait that makes someone attractive. For intelligence to be truly alluring, it should be enhanced by qualities such as elegance and class, implying that the combination of intellect and sophistication forms a deeper, more attractive character.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a speech about the importance of personal presentation alongside professional skills.
Sometimes our connection is frayed, it is in danger, it seems almost lost. Views and streets deny knowledge of us, the air grows thin. Wouldn't we rather have a destiny to submit to, than, something that claims us, anything, instead of such flimsy choices, arbitrary days?
I was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.
Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
I just believed it easily, the way you might believe and in fact remember that you once had another set of teeth, now vanished but real in spite of that. Until one day, one day when I may even have been in my teens, I knew with a dim sort of hole in my insides that now I didn't believe it anymore.
You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing.
A story is not like a road to follow... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside it altered by being viewed from these windows.
If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes it worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there's room to hear more subtle things - that's when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more. Your mind just slows down, and you see a tremendous expanse in the moment. You see so much more than you could see before. It's a discipline; you have to practice it.
I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.
Every time we see people as ordinary, we turn the wine back into water.
Tell others about the truth that sets you free.
He who can reach a child's heart can reach the worlds heart.
It is not the desire of new acquisitions, but the glory of conquests, that fires the soldier's breast; as indeed the town is seldom worth much, when it has suffered the devastations of a siege.
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