We all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story.
Interpretation
Life is filled with uncertainty, and we each play a central role in our personal narratives.
Mary McCarthy's quote reflects the constant state of suspense that characterizes human existence, suggesting that each moment is filled with potential and uncertainty. It emphasizes the idea that we are the protagonists in our own lives, actively shaping our experiences and responses to the unfolding story of our lives, rather than being passive observers.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
The exile is a singular, whereas refugees tend to be thought of in the mass ... What is implied in these nuances of social standing is the respect we pay to choice. The exile appears to have made a decision, while the refugee is the very image of helplessness.
Every word she writes is a lie, including "and" and "the."
Anti-Semitism is a horrible disease from which nobody is immune, and it has a kind of evil fascination that makes an enlightened person draw near the source of infection, supposedly in a scientific spirit, but really to sniff the vapors and dally with the possibility.
If one means by style the voice, the irreducible and always recognizable and alive thing, then of course style is really everything.
To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.
You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex.
I do not believe that the Great Spirit Chief gave one kind of men the right to tell another kind of men what they must do.
Our civilization is locked in the grip of an ideology - corporatism. An ideology that denies and undermines the legitimacy of individuals as the citizen in a democracy. The particular imbalance of this ideology leads to a worship of self-interest and a denial of the public good. The practical effects on the individual are passivity and conformism in the areas that matter, and non-conformism in the areas that don't
Life is a system of half-truths and lies, Opportunistic, convenient evasion.
Mathematics can remove no prejudices and soften no obduracy. It has no influence in sweetening the bitter strife of parties, and in the moral world generally its action is perfectly null.
I haven't any language weak enough to depict the weakness of my spiritual life. If I weakened it enough it would cease to be language at all. As when you try to turn the gas-ring a little lower still, and it merely goes out.
The lowest and vilest alleys of London do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and beautiful countryside.
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