{"id":40804,"date":"2012-10-30T07:02:19","date_gmt":"2012-10-30T11:02:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=40804"},"modified":"2012-10-30T01:50:43","modified_gmt":"2012-10-30T05:50:43","slug":"singular-difficult-shadowed-brilliant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2012\/10\/30\/singular-difficult-shadowed-brilliant\/","title":{"rendered":"Singular, Difficult, Shadowed, Brilliant"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote>\n<p>The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience pain and difficulty as failure instead of saying, I will pass through this, everyone I have ever admired has passed through this, music has come out of this, literature has come out of it. We should think of our humanity as a privilege.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>\u2014Marilynne Robinson, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/interviews\/5863\/the-art-of-fiction-no-198-marilynne-robinson\" target=\"_blank\">The Art of Fiction No. 198<\/a><\/p>\n<p>[tweetbutton]<\/p>\n<p>[facebook_ilike]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being comfortable in the world. The valley of the shadow is part of that, and you are depriving yourself if you do not experience what humankind has experienced, including doubt and sorrow. We experience [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":178,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9064],"tags":[8622,8688,7782],"class_list":["post-40804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quote-unquote","tag-marilynne-robinson","tag-quotes","tag-the-art-of-fiction"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v25.4 (Yoast SEO v25.4) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Singular, Difficult, Shadowed, Brilliant by Sadie Stein<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"October 30, 2012 \u2013 The ancients are right: the dear old human experience is a singular, difficult, shadowed, brilliant experience that does not resolve into being\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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