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Always be escalating,” then, can be understood as “Be alert, always, to the possibilities you have created for variation.” If an element recurs, the second appearance is an opportunity for variation and, potentially, escalation.

SaundersA Swim in a Pond in the Rain
p.228

Related Quotes

A linked pair of writing dictums: “Don’t make things happen for no reason” and “Having made something happen, make it matter.

SaundersA Swim in a Pond in the Rain
p.46

The exciting part of all of this, to me, is that we always have a basis on which to proceed. The reader is out there, and she’s real. She’s interested in life and, by picking up our work, has given us the benet of the doubt.

All we have to do is engage her.

To engage her, all we have to do is value her.

SaundersA Swim in a Pond in the Rain
p.115

Always be escalating. That’s all a story is, really: a continual system of escalation. A swath of prose earns its place in the story to the extent that it contributes to our sense that the story is (still) escalating.

SaundersA Swim in a Pond in the Rain
p.151

This is important, because causation is what creates the appearance of meaning.

SaundersA Swim in a Pond in the Rain
p.225

We need to adore difference so that we can all finally, in fact, be the same in the only sense that matters: as human beings. And what magnificence that sameness is.

So how about we walk across the road and listen? And soon ask to be listened to, too. And promise never to interrupt. Only to learn. And eventually to respect?

And then, who knows?

To love?

KlineThe Promise That Changes Everything: I Wont Interrupt You
p.55