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“Or take this girl, for example. At a meeting just outside Paris, a fifteen-year-old girl came up to me and said that she'd been to see [The Double Life of] Véronique. She'd gone once, twice, three times and only wanted to say one thing really - that she realized that there is such a thing as a soul. She hadn't known before, but now she knew that the soul does exist. There's something very beautiful in that. It was worth making Véronique for that girl. It was worth working for a year, sacrificing all that money, energy, time, patience, torturing yourself, killing yourself, taking thousands of decisions, so that one young girl in Paris should realize that there is such a thing as a soul. It's worth it.”

“Or, to choose another example, we feel that freedom of speech is the last step in the march of victory of freedom. We forget that, although freedom of speech constitutes an important victory in the battle against old restraints, modern man is in a position where much of what "he" thinks and says are the things that everybody else thinks and says; that he has not acquired the ability to think originally—that is, for himself—which alone gives meaning to his claim that nobody can interfere with the expression of his thoughts. Again, we are proud that in his conduct of life man has become free from external authorities, which tell him what to do and what not to do. We neglect the role of the anonymous authorities like public opinion and "common sense," which are so powerful because of our profound readiness to conform to the expectations everybody has about ourselves and our equally profound fear of being different. In other words, we are fascinated by the growth of freedom from powers outside of ourselves and are blinded to the fact of inner restraints, compulsions, and fears, which tend to undermine the meaning of the victories freedom has won against its traditional enemies. We therefore are prone to think that the problem of freedom is exclusively that of gaining still more freedom of the kind we have gained in the course of modern history, and to believe that the defense of freedom against such powers that deny such freedom is all that is necessary. We forget that, although each of the liberties which have been won must be defended with utmost vigor, the problem of freedom is not only a quantitative one, but a qualitative one; that we not only have to preserve and increase the traditional freedom, but that we have to gain a new kind of freedom, one which enables us to realize our own individual self, to have faith in this self and in life.”

“Or, to express it differently, planning and competition can be combined only by planning for competition but not by planning against competition. It is of the utmost importance to the argument of this book for the reader to keep in mind that the planning against which all our criticism is directed is solely the planning against competition — the planning which is to be substituted for competition. This is the more important, as we cannot, within the scope of this book, enter into a discussion of the very necessary planning which is required to make competition as effective and beneficial as possible. But as in current usage "planning" has become almost synonymous with the former kind of planning, it will sometimes be inevitable for the sake of brevity to refer to it simply as planning, even though this means leaving to our opponents a very good word meriting a better fate.”

“Or, to put it another way, presuppositional apologetics--such as that developed by Francis Schaeffer, but also by Cornelius Van Til and, to a degree, Herman Dooeyeweerd--rejects classical apologetics precisely because presuppositionalism recognizes the truth of Derrida's claim that everything is interpretation (though I am admittedly radicalizing their intuitions).”

“Or we could skip all that, and I could show you my favorite view of the river." "Where's that?" "My condo." Her eyes widen almost imperceptibly. "So, I'm guessing that the view of the city is a euphemism?" "It might be," I admit. "I know you said you wanted your day out. But Jez--" "Shut up, Pierce," she says, silencing me with a finger on my lips. "And let's go. I'd hate to miss an exceptional view.”

“Or what The evil for us, if we had ne'er been born?— As though, forsooth, in darkling realms and woe Our life were lying till should dawn at last The day-spring of creation! Whosoever Hath been begotten wills perforce to stay In life, so long as fond delight detains; But whoso ne'er hath tasted love of life, And ne'er was in the count of living things, What hurts it him that he was never born?”

“Or, when I wasn't practicing the guitar and he wasn't listening to his headphones, still with his straw hat flat on his face, he would suddenly break the silence: 'Elio.' 'Yes?' 'What are you doing?' 'Reading.' 'No, you're not.' 'Thinking, then.' 'About?' I was dying to tell him. 'Private,' I replied. 'So you won't tell me?' 'So I won't tell you.' 'So he won't tell me,' he repeated, pensively, as if explaining to someone about me. How I loved the way he repeated what I myself had just repeated. It made me think of a caress, or of a gesture, which happens to be totally accidental the first time but becomes intentional the second time and more so yet the third.”

“Or, worse yet, when you meet a woman, and start something with her, the first woman you ever really loved; and then after a brief off-season you return to McMurdo an your reunion with her only to have her dump you on arrival as if your Kiwi idyll had never happened. Or when you see her around town soon after that, trolling with the best of them; or when you find out that some people are calling you 'the sandwich,' in reference to the ice women's old joke that bringing a boyfriend to Antarctica is like bringing a sandwich to a smorgasbord. Now that's heartbreak for you.”

“Or, worse yet, when you meet a woman, and start something with her, the first woman you ever really loved; and then after a brief off-season you return to McMurdo an your reunion with her only to have her dump you on arrival as if your Kiwi idyll had never happened. Or when you see her around town soon after that, trolling with the best of tremor when you find out that some people are calling you "the sandwich," in reference to the ice women's old joke that bringing a boyfriend to Antarctica is like bringing a sandwich to a smorgasbord. No that's heartbreak for you.”

“Or you can stay frigid," says WIll, his green eyes glinting with mischief. "You know. If you want." Christina throws a roll at him. He catches it and bites it. "Don't be mean to her," she says. "Frigidity is in her nature. Sort of like being a know-it-all is in yours." "I am not frigid!" I exclaim. "Don't worry about it," says Will. It's endearing. Look you're all red.”

“Or, if I take that same auditorium and I make it much bigger and put more space between seats, it'll be quieter because it's much harder when you're not in physical contact with people to spread a virus from person-to-person, right? There are all sorts of patterns that we see in epidemiology that help us understand why something spreads.”