Quote of the Day (Judith Guest, on ‘The Cards You’re Dealt’ in Life)

“I think living the blessed life is the luck of the draw. You don’t get control over the cards you’re dealt—whether it’s fatal illness, death, accidents—but we do have control over how we face those odds, how we play the cards. Some people with awful cards can be successful because of how they deal with the tragedies they’re handed, and that seems courageous to me. That’s what interests me, more than the fate of the blessed life.”—Ordinary People novelist Judith Guest quoted by Jeannine Ouellette, “Judith Guest: Ordinary Person,” Secrets of the City (Minneapolis-St. Paul), Oct. 19, 2004

The image accompanying this post comes from the 1980 film adaptation of Ms. Guest’s Ordinary People. Judd Hirsch plays a compassionate psychiatrist and Timothy Hutton is his patient, a teenager who exemplifies the courage that the novelist pays tribute to: finding a way to come to terms with the tragedy that threatens to consume his family.

Quote of the Day (Kenneth Branagh, on Overcoming Reverses)

“That [Samuel] Beckett phrase of ‘fail, fail again, fail better’[from Worstward Ho] is maybe one to bear in mind. But who pretends that life is one slowly ascending curve of human development? Most of the time you have to smash into something: the death, the broken relationship, the horrible career moment. Then you think, Well, what matters to me? What do I enjoy? Or even just, I’m still here.”—Actor-director Sir Kenneth Branagh quoted in David Marchese, “Talk: Kenneth Branagh Is Finally Processing His Childhood Trauma,” The New York Times Magazine, Nov. 7, 2021

(The accompanying photo of Kenneth Branagh was taken on July 10, 2009, at the Roma Fiction Fest that year, by Giorgia Meschini.)