#versa

How do we know we're not people in a movie?' she asked. I looked at her not knowing how to reply. Mama, [...] how do we know that things are real?' Great. Now we have a junior existentialist in the house. Well, we don't know. We just have to hope that what we think is real is real.' But how do we know?' she asked, insistently. Ah, a scientist, who wants empirical evidence. We don't know. We just have to hope.' Mama, how do we know things aren't a dream? You know, how sometimes life feels like a dream? Do you ever feel that way?' Yes, sweetie, I feel that way all the time. ↗

— Julie Metz

#daughter #dreams #life #mother #reality

Universal suffrage is the only guarantee against despotism. ↗

— May Wright Sewall

#despotism #guarantee #only #suffrage #universal

Do you suppose it's so much easier to make conversation with someone you already know well than with someone you don't know at all primarily because of all the previously exchanged information and shared experiences between two people who know each other well, or because maybe it's only with people we already know well and know know us well that we don't go through the awkward mental process of subjecting everything we think of saying or bringing up as a topic of light conversation to a self-conscious critical analysis and evaluation that manages to make anything we think of proposing to say the other person seem dull or stupid or banal or on the other hand maybe overly intimate or tension-producing? ↗

— David Foster Wallace

#experience

Question for your life: Let’s say we’re on a date, and I’m being all seductive by talking nonstop about such interesting topics as intergalactic nano armies and the precise elevation at which a really tall building becomes a skyscraper, how would you respond if I invited you back to my grandma’s house for a passionate night of love making? ↗

— Jarod Kintz

#dinner #flirtation #seduction #dating

Funny how nobody talks on the tubes, isn't it? I rarely catch the tube myself, or lifts. Confined spaces, everybody shuts down. Why is that? Perhaps we think everybody on the tube is a potential psychopath or a drunk,so we close down and pretend to read a book or something. ↗

— John Hannah

#observation #people #public #sliding-doors #society

To have God speak to the heart is a majestic experience, an experience that people may miss if they monopolize the conversation and never pause to hear God's responses. ↗

— Charles Stanley

#experience #god #hear #heart #majestic

Among leaders who have made the greatest impact through ages, I would consider Muhammad before Jesus Christ. ↗

— James Gavin

#atheist #christ #christian #fair #gavin

We define our identity always in dialogue with, sometimes in struggle against, the things our significant others want to see in us. Even after we outgrow some of these others—our parents, for instance—and they disappear from our lives, the conversation with them continues within us as long as we live. ↗

— Charles Taylor

#dialogue #life #parents #self #self-identity

In Nepal, the quality of conversation is much more important than accuracy of the content. Maybe we get overexcited about information in England? ↗

— Jane Wilson-Howarth

#nepal #love

Let me explain before another word is written: I have never once asked a cat, "So tell me what's up, Charlie?" and Charlie says, "Jeez Jackson, thanks for asking. A little annoyed by the fluorescent lights, and will you please check out this tiny piece-of-junk pan I have to crap in but, hey, I still got my legs, you know? Can't complain, pal. ↗

— Jackson Galaxy

#cat #conversations #life