#ordinary

There's always this sense of incredulity that writers feel, because they're usually living flat and ordinary lives, because they have to. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#because #feel #flat #incredulity #lives

What society doesn't realize is that in the past, ordinary people respected learning. They respected books, and they don't now, or not very much. That whole respect for serious literature and learning has disappeared. ↗

— Doris Lessing

#disappeared #in the past #learning #literature #much

For sure I once thought of myself as the poet who would save the ordinary from oblivion. ↗

— Philip Levine

#myself #oblivion #once #ordinary #poet

I'm saying look, here they come, pay attention. Let your eyes transform what appears ordinary, commonplace, into what it is, a moment in time, an observed fragment of eternity. ↗

— Philip Levine

#attention #come #commonplace #eternity #eyes

Now I think poetry will save nothing from oblivion, but I keep writing about the ordinary because for me it's the home of the extraordinary, the only home. ↗

— Philip Levine

#because #extraordinary #home #i #i think

It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: it would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg. We are like eggs at present. And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg. We must be hatched or go bad. ↗

— C. S. Lewis

#bad #being #bird #cannot #decent

I think when you've travelled around a lot in Africa, you understand something that many people here don't recognize: the extraordinary power that is Africa at village level - at community level. ↗

— Stephen Lewis

#around #community #extraordinary #here #i

That is, we are bombarded by all kinds of images and influences and we have to fend some of them off if we're to take in any of them, or to carry through just our ordinary day's work, or really deepen whatever we have to do or say. ↗

— Robert Jay Lifton

#bombarded #carry #day #deepen #fend

I have two extraordinary daughters, who, I can say proudly, are doing very well in school and in piano. Daughters are a father's joy. ↗

— James McGreevey

#doing #extraordinary #father #i #i can

The thing you notice here after America is how refreshingly ordinary people look because they haven't had their chin wrapped around the back of their ears. ↗

— Ian Mckellen

#america #around #back #because #chin