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Raymond is a man with whom Gifty shared a romantic relationship early in grad school. The son of an African Methodist Episcopal preacher, Raymond studies Modern Thought and Literature and likes to throw elaborate dinner parties where he and his friends discuss and theorize about the world. Gifty finds him intensely attractive, but she struggles to open up to him and tell him about her family and her past. He and his friends also stand for a certain intellectualism that endlessly discusses problems in the abstract rather than coming up with solutions for them in reality. In this way, Raymond represents an intellectual approach to life that, like the religious approach characterized by P.T. and Pastor John, fails (at least in Gifty’s estimation) to address the concrete problems of the world, unlike the science she herself pursues.
Raymond Quotes in Transcendent Kingdom
The Transcendent Kingdom quotes below are all either spoken by Raymond or refer to Raymond. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 50
Quotes
It took me many years to realize that it’s hard to live in this world. I don’t mean the mechanics of living, because for most of us, our hearts will beat, our lungs will take in oxygen, without us doing anything at all to tell them to. For most of us, mechanically, physically, it’s harder to die than it is to live. But still we try to die. We drive too fast down winding roads, we have sex with strangers without wearing protection, we drink, we use drugs. We try to squeeze a little more out of our lives. It’s natural to want to do that. But to be alive in the world, every day, as we are given more and more and more, as the nature of “what we can handle” changes and our methods for how we handle it change, too, that’s something of a miracle.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
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Raymond Quotes in Transcendent Kingdom
The Transcendent Kingdom quotes below are all either spoken by Raymond or refer to Raymond. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 50
Quotes
It took me many years to realize that it’s hard to live in this world. I don’t mean the mechanics of living, because for most of us, our hearts will beat, our lungs will take in oxygen, without us doing anything at all to tell them to. For most of us, mechanically, physically, it’s harder to die than it is to live. But still we try to die. We drive too fast down winding roads, we have sex with strangers without wearing protection, we drink, we use drugs. We try to squeeze a little more out of our lives. It’s natural to want to do that. But to be alive in the world, every day, as we are given more and more and more, as the nature of “what we can handle” changes and our methods for how we handle it change, too, that’s something of a miracle.
Related Characters:
Page Number and Citation:
Explanation and Analysis:
