A Quote by Barbara Pym

It was odd how one found oneself making trivial conversation on important occasions. Perhaps it was because one could not say what was really in one's mind. — © Barbara Pym
It was odd how one found oneself making trivial conversation on important occasions. Perhaps it was because one could not say what was really in one's mind.
I've found that if I say what I'm really thinking and feeling, people are more likely to say what they really think and feel. The conversation becomes a real conversation.
You know what I'm great at? Trivial Pursuit. What good is that gonna do you in life? It has the word 'trivial' in the name. The game is basically telling you that you pursue trivial things. Trivial - as in not important. Trivial - as in maybe you should've gone to grad school.
Perhaps there really are occasions in life when it’s best not to say anything.
How I was raised was, there were no rules - nothing like that. If I wanted to take a drug because I was in school and everybody was doing it, I could go to my parents and say, "I really want to try this." And they'd say, "If you do this, O.K., but this is what can happen to you..." They'd say, "Don't get it in the streets, because it could be really bad and make you freak out. Don't take it in a crowded place, because you'll panic."
Twitter has allowed the conversation to broaden and become more inclusive. At times, the conversation is really tense but that's because we're talking about really important issues. It's not going to be easy but at least the conversations are happening.
How odd, to suddenly glimpse a facet of me I didn't know existed. I guess it really isn't all that unusual to surprise oneself with an ugly bit of ego.
Visiting a new town is like having a conversation. Places ask questions of you just as searchingly as you question them. And, as in any conversation, it helps to listen with an open mind, so you can be led somewhere unexpected. The more you leave assumptions at home, I've found, the better you can hear whatever it is that a destination is trying to say to you.
I am a result of what has happened on this planet - how could I find the art to say that? I can't, and yet, I am drawn to it because of the enormity of it. That seems really important.
There are rare occasions when I inevitably have to go out. And when I do, people come up to me to say they're really glad to see me, and that they're really proud of how more people got to know about Korea because of us.
I don't understand why it's more socially acceptable to say that you are a shallow person than to just say this is not something you want to do. Especially because it's a really hard job. It's a really important job. And why the hell should you do a really hard, important job that you don't want to do? That has extremely high stakes? That just blows my mind.
Then how come everyone's making like everything that isn't important is very important, all the while they're so busy pretending what's really important isn't important at all?
I can only say that one's individual situation is more real and important to oneself than the devastations of fates and empires especially when they do not vitally affect oneself
I can only say that one's individual situation is more real and important to oneself than the devastations of fates and empires especially when they do not vitally affect oneself.
The feminist movement has been important to me because it's made me feel less odd and also because it has made me understand some of the pressures on women which I was lucky enough to have escaped, perhaps because of my eccentricity or the oddness of my upbringing.
It's a conversation that nobody really likes to have, and it seems that we never can get to a solution with it and something horrific happens. We all stand back and say, "How could we let that happen?" and then it goes away and we move on.
People like ourselves may see nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange and magical it appears to a purely oral people - a conversation with no one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand?
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