The world was ending then, it's ending still, and I'm happy to belong to it again.
Interpretation
This quote reflects a sense of acceptance and appreciation for life amidst its inevitable challenges and endings.
In this quote, Jonathan Franzen captures the duality of existence: while the world faces constant endings and changes, there is a profound joy in being a part of it. It suggests that even in difficult times, finding happiness and belonging is possible and valuable, highlighting the beauty of life despite its transience.
In practice
In a speech about resilience during challenging times.
Every good writer I know needs to go into some deep, quiet place to do work that is fully imagined. And what the Internet brings is lots of vulgar data. It is the antithesis of the imagination. It leaves nothing to the imagination.
The problem was money and the indignities of life without it. Every stroller, cell phone, Yankees cap, and SUV he saw was a torment. He wasn't covetous, he wasn't envious. But without money he was hardly a man.
Each new thing he encountered in life impelled him in a direction that fully convinced him of its rightness, but then the next new thing loomed up and impelled him in the opposite direction, which also felt right. There was no controlling narrative: he seemed to himself a purely reactive pinball in a game whose only object was to stay alive for staying alive's sake.
If multiculturalism succeeds in making us a nation of independently empowered tribes, each tribe will be deprived of the comfort of victimhood and be forced to confront human limitation for what it is: a fixture of life.
To read is to have experiences; every book changes my life at least a little bit. The first time I can remember this happening was when I was 10, with a biography of Thomas Edison.
Good novels are produced by people who voluntarily isolate themselves and go deep, and report from the depths on what they find.
You know it's only 50 miles from Grand River to Canton, but it took me 67 years to travel that distance.
If I had been born in the circus, my parents would have pushed me on that little high wire at four years old. That's when the body is most limber to learn those acrobatics.
You must save what you can of your life; you musn't lose it all simply because you've lost a part.
In life and in sports we know that nothing lasts forever. The same year the greatest physical gift (football) the Lord gave me was taken away from me, I was blessed with the greatest gift any of us could have in two beautiful children. Iβd take that trade every day of the week.
Always cut the cards...and smile when you lose.
It just seems there's better things to do in your life than be on television if it's not interesting, if it's not challenging, if it's not fun. You know? When it stops being those things for me, I'll stop making television.
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