A Quote by Thomas McGuane

One of the illusions that we live by is that we can really know anybody else, and we're often surprised by traits in people that we thought we knew very well. The struggle to overcome loneliness, which is sort of our universal burden, leads us to leap to conclusions about who other people are.
People never regret when they come out of a movie and they've been crying. I think people need it. That's why people have the theater and live music, which is dwindling as well. I think people like to go see things and have an emotional, transcendent, universal human experience, but so often we're like, "Let's go watch Green Lantern," which we all know is just not going to do anything for our souls.
The mythology around colorblindness leads people to imagine that if poor kids of color are failing or getting locked up in large numbers, it must be something wrong with them. It leads young kids of color to look around and say: "There must be something wrong with me, there must be something wrong with us. Is there something inherent, something different about me, about us as a people, that leads us to fail so often, that leads us to live in these miserable conditions, that leads us to go in and out of prison?"
Very often, people who actually pick up a book of mine for the first time are kind of surprised. And I get these letters saying, well, who knew that you were good, you know?
I wish other people would write about loneliness more. It's hard to remember that it's not personal. We live in a world that is built to make people lonely... It's difficult to remember that your loneliness is not really about you and everyone has it.
There are times when I can find myself in a book, too, for two or three hours. But afterward I have such an urge to go out and reach for other people. Very often they're not around. There's also a metaphysical loneliness. We all feel it. The burden of living one's own life is experiencing sensations that no one else can share. You take a step in a house, you start moving around the house, no one else moves with you. You're walking by yourself.
As prevalent as loneliness is, many people don't recognize that people that they know may very well be suffering from loneliness. It's important for many reasons, one of which is that it has a profound impact on health.
We know that chronic loneliness has consequences. It certainly depresses our mood. And in terms of our health, people who struggle with loneliness also have an increased risk for cardiovascular disease, dementia, depression, and anxiety. Loneliness is also associated with a shorter lifespan.
It is fear which leads us to war, ... It is fear which leads us to believe that we must kill or be killed. Fear which leads us to attack those who have not attacked us. Fear which leads us to ring our nation in the very heavens with weapons of mass destruction.
Wounding and healing are not opposites. They're part of the same thing. It is our wounds that enable us to be compassionate with the wounds of others. It is our limitations that make us kind to the limitations of other people. It is our loneliness that helps us to to find other people or to even know they're alone with an illness. I think I have served people perfectly with parts of myself I used to be ashamed of.
Is it possible really to love other people? If I’m lonely and in pain, everyone outside me is potential relief—I need them. But can you really love what you need so badly? Isn’t a big part of love caring more about what the other person needs? How am I supposed to subordinate my own overwhelming need to somebody else’s needs that I can’t even feel directly? And yet if I can’t do this, I’m damned to loneliness, which I definitely don’t want … so I’m back at trying to overcome my selfishness for self-interested reasons.
People hear my dad is involved in politics, and all of a sudden I went to private school and had a nanny. There's a misconception that my dad, that our family is some kind blue-blood family... If people knew my friends, talked to anybody I grew up with, knew anybody from my old neighborhood, they'd know that's really, really far from the truth.
We can carry the burden of hurt throughout our lives. We can make the hurt that we have experienced the defining aspect of our stories of ourselves. That means that somebody else gets to say who we are, somebody else gets to decide how we feel, and somebody else gets to decide how we see the world. Forgiveness not only frees us from the burden of someone else's opinion of us, but it allows us the opportunity to really write a story of ourselves that we can love, enjoy, relish, and live into.
We've seen the struggle, and we know that most American families are dealing with some sort of struggle like we are. And I think they can relate to us, you know, as parents who are hopeful and are supportive of our son, and we will continue to be supportive. And I think that makes us more empathetic about helping other Americans.
You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself. You learn to watch other people, but you never watch yourself because you strive against loneliness. If you read a book, or shuffle a deck of cards, or care for a dog, you are avoiding yourself. The abhorrence of loneliness is as natural as wanting to live at all. If it were otherwise, men would never have bothered to make an alphabet, nor to have fashioned words out of what were only animal sounds, nor to have crossed continents - each man to see what the other looked like.
Well, I don't know what Ron has in mind, but I do know about the arc of the show. Looking at how intuitive and instinctive Eddie and I play, that is the sort of thing that leads into sexual chemistry. I wouldn't be surprised if it emerged.
I really became aware of the fact that, oh yeah, whereas a lot of other shows are sort of cynical or jaded or just sort of coming from that sort of energy, our show is very, very about these love-based relationships. It really comes out, a lot of times, in a sweet way. And I think people find that refreshing about our show. That's one of the things I definitely picked up on.
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