I began writing when I was still in the British Foreign Service, and it was then understood that even if you wrote about butterfly collecting, you used another name.
John Le CarreRead
Gerald Westerby, he told himself. You were present at your birth. You were present at your several marriages and at some of your divorces, and you will certainly be present at your funeral. High time, in our considered view, that you were present at certain other crucial moments in your history.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of being present and aware during significant life events.
This quote reflects on the notion of mindfulness and self-awareness throughout one's life. It suggests that while we may be present during key milestones such as birth, marriage, and death, we often overlook our presence in other important moments that shape our history and identity. It encourages a conscious engagement with life's pivotal experiences rather than merely going through the motions.
In practice
As a graduation speech theme to inspire students to be present and engaged in their future.
I began writing when I was still in the British Foreign Service, and it was then understood that even if you wrote about butterfly collecting, you used another name.
In every war zone that I've been in, there has been a reality and then there has been the public perception of why the war was being fought. In every crisis, the issues have been far more complex than the public has been allowed to know.
The cat sat on the mat is not a story. The cat sat on the other cat’s mat is a story.
The monsters of our childhood do not fade away, neither are they ever wholly monstrous.
Coming home from very lonely places, all of us go a little mad: whether from great personal success, or just an all-night drive, we are the sole survivors of a world no one else has ever seen.
If I had to put a name to it, I would wish that all my books were entertainments. I think the first thing you've got to do is grab the reader by the ear, and make him sit down and listen. Make him laugh, make him feel. We all want to be entertained at a very high level.
No tree becomes rooted and sturdy unless many a wind assails it. For by its very tossing it tightens its grip and plants its roots more securely; the fragile trees are those that have grown in a sunny valley.
One who comes to the Court must come to adore, not to protest. That's the new gloss on the First Amendment.
Generally in war the best policy is to take a state intact; to ruin it is inferior to this.
There is no God, cry the masses more and more vociferously; and with the loss of God man loses his sense of values — is, as it were, massacred because he feels himself of no account.
Perhaps the surest test of an individual's integrity is his refusal to do or say anything that would damage his self-respect.
In the voyeurism of Reality TV, the viewer's passivity is kept intact, pampered and massaged and force-fed Chicken McNuggets of carefully edited snippets that permit him or her to sit in easy judgment and feel superior at watching familiar strangers make fools of themselves. Reality TV looks in only one direction: down.
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