I want to think I deserve what I get. I don't want to consider how vastly I am overly rewarded. I don't want to consider the injustices around me. I don't want any encounters with the disenfranchised. I want to say it's not my fault. But it is, it's yours and mine, and ours. We'd better figure out ways to spread some equity around if we want to go on living in a society that is at least semi-functional. It's a fundamental responsibility, to ourselves.
William KittredgeDon't worry about meaning. If a story's any good, it can't help but have meaning. Let the PhDs tell you what your story means.
William KittredgeThey knew bullshit, and they knew about the ruling class; dying for a ruling class cause was almost always bullshit.
William KittredgeI had discovered a terrible vulnerability I myself which I think of not as cowardliness but as an ability to imagine too much.
William KittredgeIt is a skill we learn early, the art of inventing stories to explain away the fearful scared strangeness of the world. Storytelling and make-believe, like war and agriculture, are among the arts of self-defense, and all of them are ways of enclosing otherness and claiming ownership.
William KittredgeThe specific danger is us; we are rampant; this earth is our only friend; we are destroying it increment by increment at a horrific rate. We must understand that we can't buy it back.
William KittredgeWe tell stories to talk out the trouble in our lives, trouble otherwise so often so unspeakable. It is one of our main ways of making our lives sensible. Trying to live without stories can make us crazy. They help us recognize what we believe to be most valuable in the world, and help us identify what we hold demonic.
William Kittredge