“I think now that fate is half shaped by expectation, half by inattention. But somehow, when you lose something you love, faith takes over. You have to pay attention to what you lost. You have to undo the expectation.”
Source: The Joy Luck Club
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Amy Tan 89
American novelist 1952Related quotes
“COINCIDENCE You weren’t paying attention to the other half of what was going on.”
context (3) “You Have to Push Him Over”
Stand on Zanzibar (1968)
“You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope… I have loved none but you.”
Variant: You pierce my soul. I am half agony, half hope. Tell me not that I am too late, that such precious feelings are gone for ever.
Source: Persuasion
Source: The Heritage Universe, Resurgence (2002), Chapter 20, “Tally on Down” (p. 246)
2nd Question and Answer Session, Saanen (24 July 1980) http://www.jkrishnamurti.org/krishnamurti-teachings/view-text.php?tid=1395&chid=1092&w=, J.Krishnamurti Online, JKO Serial No. SA80Q2
1980s
Context: And the brain has been trained to record because then in that recording there is safety, there is security, there is strength, a vitality, and therefore in that recording the mind creates the image about oneself. Right? And that image will constantly get hurt. So is it possible to live without a single image? Go into it, sir. Don't please go to sleep. Single image about yourself, about your husband, wife, children, friend and so on, about the politicians, about the priests, about the ideals, not a single shadow of an image? We are saying it is possible, must be, otherwise you will always be getting hurt, always living in a pattern. In that there is no freedom. And when you call me an idiot, to be so attentive at that moment. Right? When you give complete attention there is no recording. It is only when there is not attention, inattention, you record. I wonder if you capture this. Is it getting too difficult? Too abstract? That is, you flatter me. I like it. The liking at that moment is inattention. In that moment there is no attention. Therefore recording takes place. But when you flatter me, instead of calling me an idiot, now you have gone to the other extreme, flatter me, to listen to it so completely, without any reaction, then there is no centre which records.
Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter 38, Escape