Books mean all possibilities. They mean moving out of yourself, losing yourself, dying of thirst and living to your full. They mean everything.
Interpretation
Books open the door to endless possibilities and experiences beyond oneself.
In this quote, Ali Smith emphasizes the transformative power of books. They are not just sources of information; they allow individuals to explore new worlds, lose themselves in stories, and experience the full spectrum of life through the words of others. By engaging with literature, we can expand our horizons and discover new aspects of our existence.
In practice
During a speech at a literary festival, I might say, 'As Ali Smith profoundly puts it, books mean all possibilities.'
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.
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.
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 isnβt 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.
When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
The stuff that I learned on 'Sons,' the education of how to tell stories, was part of that mythology. It's hard to look at it and go, 'Oh, if I knew this, I would have done it this way,' because the fact is I like to think that all that sort of unraveled as it was supposed to.
There's so much talk of representation in politics and entertainment - it's everywhere - but I didn't realize representation was important until really my senior year of high school.
The important thing to note is that it is not important whether Malala was shot or not - Malala is not asking for personal favors or support. She is asking for support with girls' education and women's rights. So don't support Malala, support her campaign for girls' education and women's rights.
All children are artists, and it is an indictment of our culture that so many of them lose their creativity, their unfettered imaginations, as they grow older.
All children are born to grow, to develop, to live, to love, and to articulate their needs and feelings for their self-protection
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