...I realized that I knew less about loneliness than I had thought - and much less than I would know when he went away.
Interpretation
The quote reflects the complexities of loneliness and the deeper understanding one gains through relationships.
In this quote, Octavia Butler highlights the irony of understanding loneliness. Initially, the speaker believed they comprehended what loneliness meant, but through the experience of a relationship, they realized that true loneliness is far more profound than they had anticipated. The speaker acknowledges that the impending absence of a significant person will deepen their understanding of solitude, suggesting that relationships force us to confront and understand our feelings in ways we might not expect.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of connection, one might say, 'As Octavia Butler wisely observed, we often know less about loneliness than we think.'
What I'm working on now - I'm back to fantasy, although considering that it's me, I'm turning it into a kind of science fantasy. It's a vampire story - but my vampires are biological vampires. They didn't become vampires because someone bit them; they were born that way.
Slavery was a long slow process of dulling.
Here I was into astronomy, and here into anthropology, and there I go into geology. It was much more fun to be able to research and write about whatever I wanted to.
There is no end To what a living world Will demand of you.
You don't start out writing good stuff. You start out writing crap and thinking it's good stuff, and then gradually you get better at it. That's why I say one of the most valuable traits is persistence.
Better to stay alive," I said. "At least while there's a chance to get free." I thought of the sleeping pills in my bag and wondered just how great a hypocrite I was. It was so easy to advise other people to live with their pain.
I want to write about the great and powerful thing that listening is. And how we forget it. And how we don't listen to our children, or those we love. And least of all - which is so important, too - to those we do not love. But we should. Because listening is a magnetic and strange thing, a creative force...When we are listened to, it creates us, makes us unfold and expand. Ideas actually begin to grow within us and come to life.
We had a death pact, and I have to keep my half of the bargain. Please bury me next to my baby in my leather jacket, jeans and motorcycle boots. Goodbye.
My own approach has always been to push intense emotions down and attempt to deal with them later. When I was younger, I was terrified to express anger because it would often kick-start a horrible reaction in the men in my life.
She spoke quietly then, the tiniest crack in her voice, and all at once Lacey Pemerton was not Lacey Pemberton. She was justβlike, a person.
I am not your justification for existence.
Even though my mother had told me growing up that, 'If you win, nobody cares what color you are,' that wasn't necessarily true in the N.F.L.
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