The ability of humans to read meaning into patterns is the most defining characteristic we have.
Interpretation
Humans have a unique skill for interpreting patterns and finding meaning in them.
Eleanor Catton's quote highlights the essential human trait of pattern recognition and the tendency to derive significance from these patterns. This ability distinguishes humanity from other species and shapes our understanding of the world, influencing everything from art and culture to science and technology.
In practice
In a motivational speech about creativity, one might quote Catton to emphasize the importance of seeing connections in our experiences.
My sense of injustice about our family's 'weirdness' in not owning a car was amplified by the fact that we did not own a television, either - my parents were unapologetic about this and told me very cheerfully that I would thank them for it when I was older, which was quite true.
Often I listen to songs on repeat for days and days at a time. There's something hypnotic or meditative, and it mirrors the way that I am putting the sentence together, going back over the same phrases again and again.
For although a man is judged by his actions, by what he has said and done, a man judges himself by what he is willing to do, by what he might have said, or might have done—a judgment that is necessarily hampered, not only by the scope and limits of his imagination, but by the ever-changing measure of his doubt and self-esteem.
Writing is exhilarating, but reading reviews is not. I've been really devastated by 'good' reviews because they misunderstand the project of the book. It can be strangely galvanising to get a 'bad' one.
It is a mark of the depth of their wounding that they are pretending they suspected it all along. Everything that they have seen and been told about love so far has been an inside perspective, and they are not prepared for the crashing weight of this exclusion. It dawns on them now how much they never saw and how little they were wanted, and with this dawning comes a painful re-imagining of the self as peripheral, uninvited, and utterly minor.
I see disappointment as something small and aggregate rather than something unified or great. With a little effort, every failure can be turned into something good.
They are supposed to be dispassionate dispensers of Pure Justice, icy islands of emotionless calculation. In short, umpires should be acute Republicans.
Preventive war is like committing suicide out of fear of death.
Wars of aggression are popular nowadays with those nations convinced that only victory and conquest could improve their material well-being.
I feel most alive, most electric with faith, breath, and courage, when I think of God as a current that runs through all that is. Not by will or by choice. Not as a benediction but because there are laws even God must obey.
What a sad story, I thought for so long. Not that I now think it was happy. But I think it is true, and thus the question of whether it is sad or happy has no meaning whatever.
And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.
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