Tall, aren't you?" she said. "I didn't mean to be." Her eyes rounded. She was puzzled. She was thinking. I could see, even on that short acquaintance, that thinking was always going to be a bother to her.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the complexity of self-perception and the burdens of thought.
In this quote, the dialogue captures a moment of unexpected self-awareness triggered by an observation. The protagonist acknowledges their height, yet dismisses it as unintentional, revealing a larger theme about how perceptions can both define and confuse our identity. The mention of 'thinking' as a bother suggests that deeper contemplation can be both enlightening and burdensome, making it a philosophical meditation on self-identity and the nature of awareness.
In practice
This quote can be used as a reflection in a talk about the complexities of self-identity.
Undoubtedly the stories about them [hard-boiled detectives] had a fantastic element. Such things happened, but not so rapidly, nor to so close-knit a group of people, nor within so narrow a frame of logic. This was inevitable because the demand was for constant action; if you stopped to think you were lost. When in doubt, have a man come through a door with a gun in his hand.
There was a desert wind blowing that night. It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen. You can even get a full glass of beer at a cocktail lounge.
Organized crime is the dirty side of the sharp dollar.
When in doubt, have a man come through the door with a gun in his hand.
The flood of print has turned reading into a process of gulping rather than savoring.
If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.
A person is neither a thing nor a process but an opening through which the Absolute can manifest.
If you start trying to figure out yourself from the image everyone has of you, you run into a dead end.
There are no circumstances imaginable, not even victory, under which the proletariat should give up its possession of arms.
How much pain they have cost us, the evils which have never happened.
Politicians - power itself - are abject because they merely embody the profound contempt people have for their own lives. One should be grateful to the politicians for accepting the abstractness of power, and ridding others of its burden. This inevitably kills them but they get their revenge by passing onto others the corpse of power.
Prison is where you promise yourself the right to live.
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