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Quote by Maggie Shipstead

Work

Great Circle

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Author

Maggie Shipstead
Maggie Shipstead

Maggie Shipstead is an American author born in 1983. Her works are known for their delicate emotional descriptions and profound thematic explorations. Her debut novel, 'The Kapua‘a', was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2011 and won the O. Henry Prize. Shipstead's writing often focuses on family, identity, and deep questions about human existence. more

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“We are now face to face with the truly Ultimate Ambiguity which is the human spirit. This is the most fascinating ambiguity of all: that as each of us grows up, the mark of our maturity is that we accept our mortality; and yet we persist in our search for immortality. We may believe it's all transient, even that it's all over; yet we believe a future. We believe. We emerge from a cinema after three hours of the most abject degeneracy in a film such as ''La Dolce Vita,'' and we emerge on wings, from the sheer creativity of it; we can fly on, to a future. And the same is true after witnessing the hopelessness of ''Godot'' in the theater, or after the aggressive violence of ''The Rite of Spring'' in the concert hall. Or even after listening to the bittersweet young cynicism of an album called ''Revolver,'' we have wings to fly on.”