Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality.
Interpretation
Life often takes unexpected twists and turns, contrasting with our attempts to create order and meaning in our stories.
In this quote, Stephen Fry suggests that life is inherently unpredictable and complex, resembling a novel that defies conventional narrative structures. Authors often strive to make their stories mirror the simplicity and symmetry of real life, yet true reality is often filled with complications and irregularities that can't be neatly packaged into a tidy narrative. Fry highlights the creative struggle of artists who attempt to capture the chaos of life while reality often resists such simplification.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the unpredictability of life during a graduation ceremony.
I used many times to touch my own chest and feel, under its asthmatic quiver, the engine of the heart and lungs and blood and feel amazed at what I sensed was the enormity of the power I possessed. Not magical power, but real power. The power simply to go on, the power to endure, that is power enough, but I felt I had also the power to create, to add, to delight, to amaze and to transform.
To be human and to be adult means constantly to be in the grip of opposing emotions, to have daily to reconcile apparently conflicting tensions. I want this, but need that. I cherish this, but I adore its opposite too.
There comes a time when the blankness of the future is just so extreme, it's like such a black wall of nothingness. Not of bad things like a cave full of monsters and so, you're afraid of entering it. It's just nothingness, the void, emptiness and it is just horrible. It's like contemplating a future-less future and so you just want to step out of it. The monstrosity of being alive overwhelms you.
As someone who worked hard for a Labour victory in the 90s, do I regret it? Not really. It was bound to happen. And it'll happen with the next government, and the one after it. Because all governments serve us. They serve the filth.
It's now very common to hear people say 'I'm rather offended by that'.
You can't just say there is a God because well, the world is beautiful. You have to account for bone cancer in children. You have to account for the fact that almost all animals in the wild live under stress with not enough to eat and will die violent and bloody deaths. There is not any way that you can just choose the nice bits and say that means there is a God and ignore the true fact of what nature is.
We face so many challenges in life: poverty, distress, humiliation, the struggle for justice, persecutions, the difficulty of daily conversion, the effort to remain faithful to our call to holiness, and many others. But if we open the door to Jesus and allow him to be part of our lives, if we share our joys and sorrows with him, then we will experience the peace and joy that only God, who is infinite love, can give.
There were many moments in the Vine like that one--where you might think today was yesterday, and yesterday was tomorrow, and so on. Because we all believed we were tragic, and we drank. We had that helpless, destined feeling. We would die with handcuffs on. We would be put a stop to, and it wouldn't be our fault. So we imagined. And yet we were always being found innocent for ridiculous reasons.
Life's a test, mistakes are lessons, but the gift of life is knowing that you have made a difference.
From a boy_x000D_ _x000D_ I gloated on existence. Earth to me_x000D_ _x000D_ Seemed all-sufficient and my sojourn there_x000D_ _x000D_ One trembling opportunity for joy.
Each time I think I've created time for myself, along comes a throwback to disrupt my private space.
Sometimes I can hear my bones straining under the weight of all the lives I'm not living.
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