And it was always the stories that needed the telling that gave us the rope we could cross any river with. They balanced us high above any crevasse. They made us be natural acrobats. They made us brave. They met us well. They changed us. It was in their nature to.
Interpretation
Stories are essential for personal growth and overcoming challenges.
This quote by Ali Smith emphasizes the transformative power of stories in our lives. It suggests that the narratives we encounter are not just tales to be told; they provide us with the strength and courage to navigate life's challenges, shaping who we are and enriching our experiences. Through stories, we learn to balance our fears and face obstacles with bravery, ultimately leading to personal change and growth.
In practice
In a motivational speech about resilience, one might use this quote to illustrate how stories empower individuals.
Tonight I can smell the season the way it's usually only possible to at the very first moments of its return, before you're used to it, when you've forgotten its smell, then there it is back in the air and the flow of things shifting and resettling again.
It's about the connecting force from form to form. It's the toe bone connecting to the shoulder bone. It's the bacterial kick of life force, something growing out of nothing, forming itself out of something else. Form never stops. And form is always environmental.
Google is so strange. It promises everything, but everything isn’t there. You type in the words for what you need, and what you need becomes superfluous in an instant, shadowed instantaneously by the things you really need, and none of them answerable by Google.
Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.
Get yourself in that intense state of being next to madness. Keep yourself in, not necessarily a frenzied state, but in a state of great intensity. The kind of state you would be in before going to bed with your partner. That heightened state when you're in a carnal embrace: time stops and nothing else matters. You should always write with an erection. Even if you're a woman.
A memoir is always the most authentic telling of a situation, but a novel gets to different places.
Hip-hop was created out of necessity. We needed to create some digitized things to help us understand what we were feeling.
Kid ... Comics will break your heart.
Artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
The real composer thinks about his work the whole time; he is not always conscious of this, but he is aware of it later when he suddenly knows what he will do.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.