It is the stories we don't get, the ones we miss, pass over, fail to recognize, don't pick up on, that will send us to hell.
Interpretation
Missed opportunities and unacknowledged stories can lead to regret and negativity in life.
Molly Ivins emphasizes the importance of recognizing and valuing the stories and experiences that often go unnoticed in our lives. These missed narratives, whether personal or societal, have the potential to shape our understanding of the world and ourselves; failure to engage with them can lead to feelings of despair and moral detachment, suggesting that our humanity is deeply connected to the stories we acknowledge and share.
In practice
In a speaking engagement about the importance of storytelling in education.
Racists seem obsessed by the idea that illegal workers - the hardest-working, poorest people in America - are somehow getting away with something, sneaking goodies that should be for Americans. You can always avoid this problem by having no social services. This is the refreshing Texas model, and it works a treat.
Populism is the simple premise that markets need to be restrained by society and by a democratic political system. We are not socialists or communists, we are proponents of regulated capitalism and, I might add, people who have read American history.
We should all laugh more at our elected officials - it's good for us and good for them.
Although it is true that only about 20 percent of American workers are in unions, that 20 percent sets the standards across the board in salaries, benefits and working conditions. If you are making a decent salary in a non-union company, you owe that to the unions. One thing that corporations do not do is give out money out of the goodness of their hearts.
Imagine wasting all that perfectly good anger on paranoid fantasies. Not since Emily Litella got upset about "Soviet jewelry" has there been such a waste of anger. You will notice a certain theme to these Emily Litella Moments. Behind them all is a touching faith that someone, somewhere is actually in charge of what's happening - a proposition I beg leave to doubt.
All anyone needs to enjoy the state legislature is a strong stomach and a complete insensitivity to the needs of the people. As long as you don't think about what that peculiar body should be doing and what it actually is doing to the quality of life in Texas, then it's all marvelous fun.
Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!
This is the strangest life I've ever known.
Nobody’s going to save you. No one’s going to cut you down, cut the thorns thick around you. No one’s going to storm the castle walls nor kiss awake your birth, climb down your hair, nor mount you onto the white steed. There is no one who will feed the yearning. Face it. You will have to do, do it yourself.
Bereavement is the deepest initiation into the mysteries of human life, an initiation more searching and profound than even happy love.
Even though people may be well known they still hold in their hearts the emotions of a simple person for the moments that are the most important of those we know on earth - birth, marriage, death.
Yes, you live with your feet in the mud and there's no time to be thinking about how you got in or how you're going to get out.
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