Sublime

A biographer of the novelist E. M. Forster wrote, “To speak to him was to be seduced by an inverse charisma, a sense of being listened to with such intensity that you had to be your most honest, sharpest, and best self.” Imagine how good it would be to be that guy.

“The shape of our knowledge becomes the shape of our living; the relation of the knower to the known becomes the relation of the living self to the larger world.” Palmer is saying that the way we attend to others determines the kind of person we become. If we see people generously, we will become generous, or if we view them coldly, we will become

A writer could blast out her opinions, but writers are at their best not when they tell people what to think but when they provide a context within which others can think.