We’re too much ourselves. Afraid of letting go of what we are, in case we are nothing, and holding on so tight, we lose everything else.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the fear of losing one's identity and the consequences of being overly attached to it.
Clive Barker's quote suggests that individuals can become so entangled in their own self-identity and perceptions that they fear relinquishing them, worried that without these constructs, they might be left with nothing. This attachment often leads to a detrimental grip on their essence, causing them to miss out on broader experiences and connections available in life.
In practice
In a motivational speech about personal growth, this quote could be shared to emphasize the importance of embracing change.
Of course it’s the apparently tranquil periods that deceive us. Though our instruments or our senses or our wits may not be able to see the processes that are leading toward these clusters of events, they’re happening. The star, the wheel, the butterfly—all are in a subtle state of unrest, waiting for the moment when some invisible mechanism signals that the time has come. Then the star explodes; the wheel makes poor men rich; the butterfly mates and dies.
In this sense love is of a different order to any other phenomenon, for it may be both an event and a sign of that invisible mechanism I spoke of before; perhaps the finest sign, the most certain. In it’s throes we need neither luck nor science. We are the wheel, and the man who profits by it. We are the star, and the darkness it pierces. We are the butterfly, brief and beautiful.
Perhaps a wiser eye than hers would be able to read tomorrow in tonight's stars, but where was the fun in that? It was better not to know. Better to be alive in the Here and the Now--in this bright, laughing moment--and let the Hours to come take care of themselves.
With the inevitability of a tongue returning to probe a painful tooth, we come back and back and back again to our fears, sitting to talk them over with the eagerness of a hungry man before a full and steaming plate.
You cut up a thing that's alive and beautiful to find out how it's alive and why it's beautiful, and before you know it, it's neither of those things, and you're standing there with blood on your face and tears in your sight and only the terrible ache of guilt to show for it.
I'm not the expert on the great gameplay. I come in for the character design, monsters, atmosphere. I'm not the technician.
Here was what Kilgore Trout cried out to me in my father's voice: "Make me young, make me young, make me young!
To swear, except when necessary, is becoming to an honorable man.
White shall not neutralize the black, nor good compensate bad in man, absolve him so; life's business being just the terrible choice.
As for begging, it is safer to beg than to take, but it is finer to take than to beg
Whoever be the instruments of any good to us, of whatever sort, we must look above them, and eye the hand and counsel of God in it, which is the first spring, and be duly thankful to God for it. And whatever evil of crosses or afflictions befalls us, we must look above the instruments of it to God.
The greatest error of a man is to think that he is weak by nature, evil by nature. Every man is divine and strong in his real nature. What are weak and evil are his habits, his desires and thoughts, but not himself.
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