A Quote by Emily St. John Mandel
No one ever thinks they’re awful, even people who really actually are. It’s some sort of survival mechanism.
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Theres a lot of lying and these are people who are incredibly flawed, and not in very sort of empathetic ways, either. Some of the things they do are pretty awful and some of the things they do to each other are pretty awful.
There's a lot of lying and these are people who are incredibly flawed, and not in very sort of empathetic ways, either. Some of the things they do are pretty awful and some of the things they do to each other are pretty awful.
Lying is not only a defense mechanism; it's also a coping mechanism and a survival technique.
I need a lot of support... Life is really hard, and I don't see some active benevolent force out there. I see it as basically a really cool survival game. You get on the right side of the tracks, and you now are actually working with what some people would call magic.
I really enjoy work to a purpose. Maybe that makes me kind of strange. In some ways - and this is going to sound awful - it could be that writing is the worst job that I've ever had. Because it's so much more important to me and there's so much more opportunity for failure and I have so many people depending on me. In some ways it's the most satisfying, the most gratifying, and the most rewarding job I've ever had. But I actually would say it's probably the worst job I've ever had too.
I laugh when I see people in pain. Sometimes I think it is a defense mechanism from childhood, where you're in so much pain you have to laugh. It is a survival mechanism.
All my work, my life, everything I do is about survival, not just bare, awful, plodding survival, but survival with grace and faith. While one may encounter many defeats, one must not be defeated.
The podcast movement was really a creative survival mechanism for standup comics.
There's this quote by a writer, Emil Cioran, he's a Romanian writer. He says that you should only put things in books that you would never dare to say to people in real life. So there is that feeling of acute embarrassment, or that you've been too revealing. I think it's some kind of survival mechanism where I never think of the reader, ever. Because then I would start censoring myself.
Over-population is a phenomenon connected with the survival of the unfit, and it is a mechanism which has created conditions favourable to the survival of the unfit and the elimination of the fit.
I think in some ways, whether you've ever actually been to Portland, people definitely understand this highly curated niche lifestyle, because a lot of people are sort of striving for that now. Or they're hating on it.
Survival is the main objective. There are going to be some awful days, I know that from my background in the sport.
I first moved to Denver to work with a group called YWAM, 'Youth With a Mission.' I was a kid - I was 18 - and did some work with homeless people. Really, trying to convert people is sort of an awful position to find yourself in, so I quickly, on my own, grew out of religious ideas.
I used to be really nervous when I sang. Like, when I was a kid starting young, 18 and 19, and my dad really had to sort of push me to start singing in front of people. Ever since I got out there and really started doing it, the only thing I've ever tried to do is just sort of is be myself, you know, never put on a voice. Sing naturally.
People sort of accuse Tolkien of not being good with female characters, and I think that Eowyn actually proves that to be wrong to some degree. Eowyn is actually a strong female character, and she's a surprisingly modern character, considering who Tolkien actually was sort of a stuffy English professor in the 1930s and '40s.
I've never really understood the desire to be immortal myself. The idea of both wanting to live forever in some form and wanting to stay young forever just sounds exhausting. It's one of those desires that people think they want but when you actually stop to think about what it actually means, it's really awful. One of the reasons that life is bearable is because it's going to end soon. One of the main concerns of fiction is how do we make a life of 85 years or so meaningful.
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