Wherever a story comes from, whether it is a familiar myth or a private memory, the retelling exemplifies the making of a connection from one pattern to another: a potential translation in which narrative becomes parable and the once upon a time comes to stand for some renascent truth. This approach applies to all the incidents of everyday life: the phrase in the newspaper, the endearing or infuriating game of a toddler, the misunderstanding at the office. Our species thinks in metaphors and learns through stories.
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The timing of death, like the ending of a story, gives a changed meaning to what preceded it.
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The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy. His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.
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Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.
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The Christian tradition was passed on to me as a great rich mixture, a bouillabaisse of human imagination and wonder brewed from the richness of individual lives.
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The family is changing not disappearing. We have to broaden our understanding of it, look for the new metaphors.
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Worlds can be found by a child and an adult bending down and looking together under the grass stems or at the skittering crabs in a tidal pool.
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What would it be like to have not only color vision but culture vision, the ability to see the multiple worlds of others.
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In the transmission of human culture, people always attempt to replicate, to pass on to the next generation the skills and values of the parents, but the attempt always fails because cultural transmission is geared to learning, not D.N.A.
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No matter how happily a woman may be married, it always pleases her to discover that there is a really nice man who wishes she were not.
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Information is a difference that makes a difference.
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