Kim White Quotes

Sto­ries are struc­tured as we wish our lives were, with a begin­ning, a mid­dle, and an end; with mean­ing and pur­pose; with a trans­for­ma­tion from dark­ness to under­stand­ing. When we read a book, we look for­ward to the end-we race toward it. We want to know what hap­pens, and we want all the loose threads tied up so that we can feel reas­sured that there is a grand design, because our real lives often feel ran­dom and meaningless."
"Are you say­ing that real life has no design or meaning?"
"No, I'm say­ing that the design is too com­pli­cated to know except in bursts of insight, and as for mean­ing… well, mean­ing is all we really have.

They will be the architects of my fate, I think to myself, despite what Sybil said about my being the author of my own destiny.

After years of pretending at emotions, he'd grown to appreciate their mystery, their chaos and randomness. Sometimes they were predictable, one-dimensional, almost stupid - other times they were so confounding, complex, and exquisite that he was convinced humans really were as special as they thought themselves to be.