A Quote by Marge Piercy
In fiction, I exercise my nosiness. I am as curious as my cats, and indeed that has led to trouble often enough and used up several of my nine lives. I am an avid listener. I am fascinated by other people's lives, the choices they make and how that works out through time, what they have done and left undone, what they tell me and what they keep secret and silent, what they lie about and what they confess, what they are proud of and what shames them, what they hope for and what they fear. The source of my fiction is the desire to understand people and their choices through time.
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Listening is terribly important if you want to understand anything about people. You listen to what they say and how they say it, what they share and what they are reticent about, what they tell truthfully and what they lie about, what they hope for and what they fear, what they are proud of, what they are ashamed of. If you don't pay attention to other people, how can you understand their choices through time and how their stories come out?
Yeah, we could have done things differently. But - If we'd done things differently, we wouldn't be who we are. We are the sum of the choices we make. Even the bad choices we make. I made a lot of bad choices, but on the other hand, I am who I am, and I'm proud of my work, and I'm proud of my family, and those are also the product of choices, including financial choices, that I made.
As a person, I am totally obsessed with the choices and decisions we make in our lives and how they dictate the course of our lives. Seemingly random choices that we make end up defining everything.
People write fiction in their minds all the time - every time we read a 'human interest' news story, or a true crime tale, we find ourselves fascinated because we're trying to understand why people behave the way they do, why they make the choices they do, how we become who we become.
Wholehearted living is about engaging in our lives from a place of
worthiness. It means cultivating the courage, compassion, and connection
to wake up in the morning and think, No matter what gets done and
how much is left undone, I am enough. It’s going to bed at night thinking,
Yes, I am imperfect and vulnerable and sometimes afraid, but that doesn’t
change the truth that I am also brave and worthy of love and belonging.
The kids like to get pictures of me for their parents. They know how proud I am of them-they have a lot more to worry about than my stardom. They are trying to make good choices for their own lives, but this gives them a little fun. They are part of my family.
Most people simply go through life. They feel that they're making choices in their lives that cause destiny to move in certain ways. I would suggest that they have no control of their lives, all their choices are really made for them.
The lives of all people flow through time, and, regardless of how brutal one moment may be, how filled with grief or pain or fear, time flows through all lives equally.
The choices that we make through our lives, the people who intersect us on our path kind of change what our fated destiny is. So some of us are lucky enough for the choices that we make to keep us on our path.
When I am writing political op-eds, I do think carefully about the impact of my words. When I am writing fiction, it's a different story. In my fiction I am more reckless. I don't care about the real world until I am done with the book.
For a long time I've walked through this world with the desire, like in Rear Window, to look into other people's lives because I know that there is a way in which I am the same as so many of the strangers that I see.
I am and always have been fascinated with people, and I have a very good time coming up with the narratives of people's lives, exploring how a person thinks and feels.
I always have a curious sort of feeling about some of my things - I hate to show them - I am perfectly inconsistent about it - I am afraid people won't understand - and I hope they won't - and am afraid they will.
I suppose for a very long time I've been trying to understand how it is that people might make sense out of their lives and make meaning and make their lives meaningful in the face of the trouble that life brings.
I am curious about people. I want to know their secrets... because I am the last person to whom I would tell a secret; people tell me their secrets.
I am a stickler for good manners, and I believe that treating other people well is a lost art. In the workplace, at the dinner table, and walking down the street--we are confronted with choices on how to treat people nearly every waking moment. Over time these choices define who we are and whether we have a lot of friends and allies or none.
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