Nothing is here in this world that is of any interest at all.
As beings who cannot know the outcome of any particular action, it is difficult for us to act in a way that will be necessarily beneficial to another, or necessarily detrimental.
The book it reminded me of most is Henry Miller’s The Books in My Life. Like Miller, Shields manages to convey his affection for and admiration of literature, and that, the enthusiasm and admiration, can revitalize the reader’s love for the art form. I’m grateful for How Literature Saved My Life because the book has made me think again – and for the first time in a while – 'Well, what is it we do when we read?' It’s a damned annoying question, but it needs to be asked now and then, and Shields has asked it in a way I find resonant and moving.
There's a tangle between weakness and vulnerability.
We are stuck with not knowing what our actions will actually lead to.
The important thing for me is that one accepts that one is irretrievably flawed and as you say, takes responsibility for those flaws, rather than hiding them in some code that allows "this" and doesn't allow "that" as if there were a way of being sure of how to be good in the world.
Now I'm a Catholic agnostic by the way. Yet those myths still live within me.
The fact that religion plays such a part in how people vote troubles me, troubles me as a minister's daughter. Because I always felt that the separation of church and state was what our forefathers and foremothers really fought for.
When you are willing to make sacrifices for a great cause, you will never be alone.
Our desires, once realized, haunt us again less readily.
Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce - yes, announce - that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by. . . liberals.