It's good not only to realize that you can't please all of the people all of the time, but that you don't want to. There's a certain type of reader that you don't ever want to write for.
Interpretation
It's important to accept that you can't satisfy everyone and recognize that it's okay not to try.
This quote emphasizes the wisdom in understanding that trying to please everyone can lead to dissatisfaction and compromise one's own voice or authenticity. It encourages writers and individuals alike to focus on their true audience and values rather than seeking universal approval.
In practice
During a writing workshop, I used this quote to encourage fellow writers to embrace their unique voices.
Life isn't happily ever after... It's work. The person you love is rarely worthy of how big your love is. Because no one is worthy of that and maybe no one deserves that burden of it, either. You'll be let down. You'll be disappointed and have your trust broken and have a lot of real sucky days. You lose more than you win. You hate the person you love as much as you love him. But you roll up your sleeves and work - at everything - because that's what growing older is.
Visitation Street is urban opera writ large. Gritty and magical, filled with mystery, poetry and pain, Ivy Pochoda’s voice recalls Richard Price, Junot Diaz, and even Alice Sebold, yet it’s indelibly her own.
The world does not have tidy endings. The world does not have neat connections. It is not filled with epiphanies that work perfectly at the moment that you need them.
Happiness doesn't lie in conspicuous consumption and the relentless amassing of useless crap. Happiness lies in the person sitting beside you and your ability to talk to them. Happiness is clear-headed human interaction and empathy. Happiness is home. And home is not a house-home is a mythological conceit. It is a state of mind. A place of communion and unconditional love. It is where, when you cross its threshold, you finally feel at peace.
I believe so deeply in the primacy of language, in lifting your prose to the highest level you're capable of and making your words symphonic.
You've learned that every good lie is threaded with truth and every accepted truth leaks lies.
The only thing over which you have complete right of control at all times is your mental attitude.
Knowledge doesn't really form part of human nature. Conflict, combat, the outcome of the combat, and, consequently, risk and chance are what gives rise to knowledge. Knowledge is not instinctive; it is counter instinctive, just as it is not natural but counter natural.
Doing nothing means unplugging from the compulsion to always keep ourselves busy, the habit of shielding ourselves from certain feelings, the tension of trying to manipulate our experience before we even fully acknowledge what that experience is.
Presumption should never make us neglect that which appears easy to us, nor despair make us lose courage at the sight of difficulties.
It is only those who are in constant revolt that discover what is true, not the man who conforms, who follows some tradition. It is only when you are constantly inquiring, constantly observing, constantly learning, that you find truth, God, or love.
To develop our real selves, we need time alone for thought and meditation. To be always giving out and never pumping in, the well runs dry.
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