98% of the people who get the magazine say they read the cartoons first - and the other 2% are lying.
Everybody has a cartoon of themselves. Mine is: I write very fast, and I'm ruthlessly efficient with my time.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Everyone has a perception of themselves that influences their actions and habits. The speaker highlights their self-image as a quick and efficient worker.
This quote reflects the idea that individuals often construct a 'cartoon' or caricature of themselves, which shapes their identity and behavior. David Remnick implies that his self-perception as someone who writes rapidly and manages time effectively drives his productivity and informs how he approaches his work and life. This self-image can empower individuals to strive towards their perceived strengths and can serve as a motivational force in their endeavors.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a motivational speech about embracing one's strengths and capabilities.
More from David Remnick
All quotes βThe world is a crazy, beautiful, ugly complicated place, and it keeps moving on from crisis to strangeness to beauty to weirdness to tragedy. The caravan keeps moving on, and the job of the longform writer or filmmaker or radio broadcaster is to stop - is to pause - and when the caravan goes away, that's when this stuff comes.
Every good journalist is aware that his trade may one day go the way of phrenology-and, what's more, the population will hardly protest the extinction.
Journalism, some huge percentage of it, should be devoted to putting pressure on power, on nonsense, on chicanery of all kinds and if that's going to invite a lawsuit, well, bring it on.
Similar quotes
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Anger tears me up inside... My own... or anyone else's.
Jealousy is cruel as the grave: the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most vehement flame. [Therefore do not compare your lot with another's lest you see their advantages and lose the joy of what you already have.]
Follow your instincts. That's where true wisdom manifests itself.
Our memories are our own, and we cannot blame anything or anyone in the past for any pain dwelling there. If we open the door to them or keep hashing over past incidents in our minds, we have only ourselves to blame.
...ambition without pious restraint must end in failure, often involving in its ruin that beautiful reverence which solaces common men for the obscurity and poverty of their lot.