The White Oak Quotes

“Sto­ries are struc­tured as we wish our lives were, with a begin­ning, a mid­dle, and an end; with mean­ing and pur­pose; with a trans­for­ma­tion from dark­ness to under­stand­ing. When we read a book, we look for­ward to the end-we race toward it. We want to know what hap­pens, and we want all the loose threads tied up so that we can feel reas­sured that there is a grand design, because our real lives often feel ran­dom and meaningless.”
“Are you say­ing that real life has no design or meaning?”
“No, I’m say­ing that the design is too com­pli­cated to know except in bursts of insight, and as for mean­ing… well, mean­ing is all we really have.”
― Kim White, The White Oak

“They will be the architects of my fate, I think to myself, despite what Sybil said about my being the author of my own destiny.”
― Kim White, The White Oak