“We're wired to expect the world to be brighter and more meaningful and more obviously interesting than it actually is. And when we realize that it isn't, we start looking around for the real world.”
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Lev Grossman45
American novelist, journalist 1969Related quotes
W. Somerset Maugham book The Razor's Edge
The Razor's Edge (1943)
Context: Nothing in the world is permanent, and we're foolish when we ask anything to last, but surely we're still more foolish not to take delight in it while we have it. If change is of the essence of existence one would have thought it only sensible to make it the premise of our philosophy.
Jodi Picoult My Sister's Keeper
Variant: the people you love can surprise you every day... maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it.
Source: My Sister's Keeper (2004)
Madeleine L'Engle (1918–2007) American writer
Section 2.2
The Crosswicks Journal, A Circle of Quiet (1972)
“Obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some”
Elvis Costello (1954) English singer-songwriter
dig interview (2004)
Context: Obviously, when I started out, I had a little bit more curiosity than some, and went seeking out the original artists, or in some cases searching up country music. I followed The Byrds a lot, and then when they did a country styled record it made me curious to know who these people were that they liked.
Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) English mathematician and philosopher
Source: 1920s, Process and Reality: An Essay in Cosmology (1929), p. 259.
Variant: It is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. This statement is almost a tautology. For the energy of operation of a proposition in an occasion of experience is its interest, and its importance. But of course a true proposition is more apt to be interesting than a false one.
As extended upon in Adventures of Ideas (1933), Pt. 4, Ch. 16.
Context: Some philosophers fail to distinguish propositions from judgments; … But in the real world it is more important that a proposition be interesting than that it be true. The importance of truth is that it adds to interest.
Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer
Source: Scandal in Spring