
“I hadn't done any of the things that I normally did with girls, yet somehow I'd fallen in love.”
Source: A Walk to Remember
Source: Dear John
“I hadn't done any of the things that I normally did with girls, yet somehow I'd fallen in love.”
Source: A Walk to Remember
Source: I'd Tell You I Love You, But Then I'd Have to Kill You
Source: The Corrections (2001)
Context: All around him, millions of newly minted American millionaires were engaged in the identical pursuit of feeling extraordinary - of buying the perfect Victorian, of skiing the virgin slope, of knowing the chef personally, of locating the beach that had no footprints. There were further tens of millions of young Americans who didn't have money but were nonetheless chasing the Perfect Cool. And meanwhile the sad truth was that not everyone could be extraordinary, not everyone could be extremely cool; because whom would this leave to be ordinary? Who would perform the thankless work of being comparatively uncool?
“You enter the extraordinary by way of the ordinary”
“The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman.”
"Women and Fiction"
Granite and Rainbow (1958)
Context: The extraordinary woman depends on the ordinary woman. It is only when we know what were the conditions of the average woman's life … it is only when we can measure the way of life and the experience of life made possible to the ordinary woman that we can account for the success or failure of the extraordinary woman as a writer.
“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.”