To avoid discovery I stay on the run. To discover things for myself, I stay on the run.
Interpretation
The quote highlights the dual nature of being on the move: fleeing from detection while simultaneously seeking knowledge and experience.
Jeanette Winterson's quote encapsulates the idea that being in a constant state of movement can serve two purposes: evading unwanted attention or scrutiny, while also pursuing personal growth and enlightenment. It reflects a deeper philosophical perspective on the necessity of exploration and the tension between concealment and discovery in one's life. The act of 'staying on the run' becomes a metaphor for the choices we make in balancing our desires for freedom with the quest for understanding.
In practice
This quote can be shared during a motivational speech about personal development.
What is remembered is not a deed in stone but a metaphor. Meta = above. Pheren = to carry. That which is carried above the literalness of life. A way of thinking that avoids the problems of gravity. The word won't let me down. The single word that can release me from all that unuttered weight.
Reading things that are relevant to the facts of your life is of limited value. The facts are, after all, only the facts, and the yearning passionate part of you will not be met there. That is why reading ourselves as a fiction as well as fact is so liberating. The wider we read the freer we become.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
Woolf wanted to say dangerous things in Orlando but she did not want to say them in the missionary position.
In that house, you will find my heart. You must break in, Henri, and get it back for me.' Was she mad? We had been talking figuratively. Her heart was in her body like mine. I tried to explain this to her, but she took my hand and put it against her chest. Feel for yourself.
History is a string full of knots, the best you can do is admire it, and maybe tie it up a bit more. History is a hammock for swinging and a game for playing.
Never cease doubting. When the doubts stop it is because you have stopped journeying.
In the end the great truth will have been learned that the quest is greater than what is sought, the effort finer that the prize (or rather, that the effort is the prize), the victory cheap and hollow were it not for the rigor of the game.
Sorrows gather around great souls as storms do around mountains; but, like them, they break the storm and purify the air of the plain beneath them.
Logical activity is not the whole of intelligence. One can be intelligent without being particularly logical.
Lord Bacon told Sir Edward Coke when he was boasting, The less you speak of your greatness, the more shall I think of it.
In an expanding universe, time is on the side of the outcast. Those who once inhabited the suburbs of human contempt find that without changing their address they eventually live in the metropolis.
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