Quote Analysis

"It wasn't so much desire that led me as my intention not to live like a coward. I was determined to take what life would offer. I didn't want to be the only woman of my generation to hold to standards everyone else had long ago abandoned."

-Anne Roiphe. Art and Madness: A Memoir of Lust without Reason. New York: Nan A. Talese, Doubleday, 2011. 19.

I just began reading this book, and I'm already in love with it. The quote above is something that I know I have felt and thought, and that I have a feeling most people go through.

For how do we want to live life? Do we want to strive for an excellence that might not be achievable? I mean, I'm sorry, but the fact is we can't all be rich and famous. Celebrity depends upon and only means something when there is the mediocre, those yearning, the proletariat with which to compare.

So we can strive for whatever we want, but there's never a guarantee that we will achieve it. I can write until my fingers are knobbed and shaking with arthritis, and my wrists crack from carpel tunnel syndrome, but that doesn't mean I'll strike that lucky vein (or marketing team) that Stephenie Meyer did and be able to make a living from it. In fact, with all of these changes recently in the publishing world, it will probably only become harder for the diamonds to glitter among the rough (I'm not saying my work is any good, just that I think a lot more crap is going to be published with the increase of book piracy).

Do we go with what's safe? Can we trust what our parents tell us? All parents do their best, but the fact is that the world changes. People's attitudes generally don't, but it certainly seems that their morals do. The shy, smart girl is generally just considered a stuck-up bitch who won't put out, rather than chased and admired from afar like some John Hughes movie.

Sometimes, we just have to face our fears. That's the only way we can change, the only way that we can improve. For sometimes, we're not perfect just the way we are. To anyone.

And usually, when we feel the safest, that's when we need to change the most.

Anywho, that's what this quote got me thinking about. What about you? There's a lot of meat there, just begging to be chewed over... (Which is my way of saying, please comment below; I'd love to hear your thoughts!)