To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed.
Joan DidionRead
As it happened, I didn't grow up to be the kind of woman who is the heroine in a Western, and although the men I have known have had many virtues and have taken me to live in many places I have come to love, they have never been John Wayne, and they have never taken me to the bend in the river where the cottonwoods grow. Deep in that part of my heart where artificial rain forever falls, that is still the line I want to hear.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the idea of unattainable ideals in love and relationships.
In this quote, Joan Didion expresses her realization that the romanticized ideals of men and love, often depicted in Westerns, do not match her real-life experiences. Despite appreciating the virtues of the men she has known and the places they've taken her, she yearns for a deeper, more mythical connection that aligns with her dreams and fantasies, symbolized by the image of John Wayne and a specific natural setting that holds personal significance.
In practice
This quote can be used in a speech about the complexities of love and the contrast between fantasy and reality.
To shift the structure of a sentence alters the meaning of that sentence, as definitely and inflexibly as the position of a camera alters the meaning of the object photographed.
The truth is, it's easier for me to write than talk... to express the state I'm in at any time.
Memories are what you no longer want to remember.
It was clear, for example, in 1988 that the political process had already become perilously remote from the electorate it was meant to represent.
I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?
Do not whine... Do not complain. Work harder. Spend more time alone.
While the primary function of formal Buddhist meditation is to create the possibility of the experience of "being," my work as a therapist has shown me that the demands of intimate life can be just as useful as meditation in moving people toward this capacity. Just as in formal meditation, intimate relationships teach us that the more we relate to each other as objects, the greater our disappointment. The trick, as in meditation, is to use this disappointment to change the way we relate.
As I got older, I realised that people saw me as other things - sometimes Korean, sometimes Japanese, sometimes just Asian. When my family moved to a more affluent white neighbourhood, I started to see myself as 'other', this amorphous category. I didn't even know what 'not other' was, but I knew I wasn't it; I wasn't what was normal.
It is true that those we meet can change us, sometimes so profoundly that we are not the same afterwards, even unto our names.
There are some men who are frightened by strong women and some men who are nurtured by them and feel nervous, with weak clinging vines. And I am very much of the latter category.
A genuine relationship is one that is not dominated by the ego with its image-making and self-seeking. In a genuine relationship, there is an outward flow of open, alert attention toward the other person in which there is no wanting whatsoever.
A million faces at my feet but all I see are dark eyes.
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