Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress
My Point... And I Do Have One. New York: Bantam Books, 1995
Ellen DeGeneres (1958) American stand-up comedian, television host, and actress
My Point... And I Do Have One. New York: Bantam Books, 1995
Tom Robbins (1932) American writer
The Syntax of Sorcery (2012)
Context: We humans have always defined ourselves by narration. What's happening today is that we're allowing multi-national corporations to tell our stories for us. The theme of corporate stories (and millions drink them in every day) seldom varies: to be happy you must consume, to be special you must conform. Absurd, obviously, yet our identities have become so fragile, so elusive, that we seem content to let advertisers provide us with their version of who we are, to let them recreate us in their image: a cookie-cutter image based on market research, shallow sociology, and insidious lies. Individualism is bad for business – though absolutely necessary for freedom, progressive knowledge, and any possible interface with the transcendent. And yes, it's entirely possible to function as a free-thinking individual without succumbing to narcissism..
“It isn't what we say or think that defines us, but what we do.”
Jane Austen book Sense and Sensibility
Variant: It is not what we think or feel that makes us who we are. It is what we do. Or fail to do...
Source: Sense and Sensibility
Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist
Source: Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life
“We are not permitted to choose the frame of our destiny. But what we put into it is ours.”
Dag Hammarskjöld (1905–1961) Swedish diplomat, economist, and author
Markings (1964)