Sadness is more or less like a head cold - with patience, it passes. Depression is like cancer.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Memory runs along deep, fixed channels in the brain, like electricity along its conduits; only a cataclysm can make the electrons rear up in shock and slide over into another channel. The human mind seems doomed to believe, as simply as a rooster believes, that where we are now is the only possibility
Interpretation
What this quote means
Memory determines our perception of reality, and change is often triggered by significant events.
In this quote, Barbara Kingsolver explores the rigid nature of human memory and thought, comparing it to electricity flowing through fixed channels. She suggests that, much like a shock can redirect electricity, a major upheaval is often necessary for individuals to reconsider their established beliefs and perceptions, highlighting our tendency to view our current situation as the only possibility.
Themes
MemoryChangeBeliefPerceptionFuture
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about personal growth during a seminar, one could illustrate the necessary shock of change using this quote.
More from Barbara Kingsolver
All quotes →Children can be your heartache. But that doesn't matter, you have to go on and have them . . . it works out.
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I'm of a fearsome mind to throw my arms around every living librarian who crosses my path, on behalf of the souls they never knew they saved.
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I did it to win love, and to prove myself capable. Not to move mountains. In my opinions, mountains don't move. They only look changed when you look down on them from great height.
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Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin.
Barbara KingsolverRead
Empathy is really the opposite of spiritual meanness. It's the capacity to understand that every war is both won and lost. And that someone else's pain is as meaningful as your own.
Barbara KingsolverRead
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