Braininess is not attractive unless combined with some signs of elegance; class.
Interpretation
Intelligence can be appealing, but it must be accompanied by grace and sophistication to truly captivate others.
Alice Munro's quote suggests that while intelligence, or 'braininess', is valuable, it does not stand alone as a trait that makes someone attractive. For intelligence to be truly alluring, it should be enhanced by qualities such as elegance and class, implying that the combination of intellect and sophistication forms a deeper, more attractive character.
In practice
This quote is perfect for a speech about the importance of personal presentation alongside professional skills.
Sometimes our connection is frayed, it is in danger, it seems almost lost. Views and streets deny knowledge of us, the air grows thin. Wouldn't we rather have a destiny to submit to, than, something that claims us, anything, instead of such flimsy choices, arbitrary days?
I was amazed as people must be who are seized and kidnapped, and who realize that in the strange world of their captors they have a value absolutely unconnected with anything they know about themselves.
Anecdotes don't make good stories. Generally I dig down underneath them so far that the story that finally comes out is not what people thought their anecdotes were about.
I just believed it easily, the way you might believe and in fact remember that you once had another set of teeth, now vanished but real in spite of that. Until one day, one day when I may even have been in my teens, I knew with a dim sort of hole in my insides that now I didn't believe it anymore.
You want in all cases for the story to get through the writing.
A story is not like a road to follow... it's more like a house. You go inside and stay there for a while, wandering back and forth and settling where you like and discovering how the room and corridors relate to each other, how the world outside it altered by being viewed from these windows.
Growing up on the plantation there in Mississippi, I would work Monday through Saturday noon. I'd go to town on Saturday afternoons, sit on the street corner, and I'd sing and play.
A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.
A good maxim allows you to have the last word without even starting a conversation.
At nineteen, it seems to me, one has a right to be arrogant; time has usually not begun its stealthy and rotten subtractions. It takes away your hair and your jump-shot, according to a popular country song, but in truth it takes away a lot more than that.
We aren't, as human beings, very good at acting in our best interest.
I would not be young again, if you offered me the world. But then I'm prejudiced.' 'You talk,' I said, 'as if you were ninety-nine.' 'For a woman I very nearly am,' she said. 'I'm thirty five.
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