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.
The only thing worse than not reading a book in the last ninety days is not reading a book in the last ninety days and thinking that it doesn't matter
It's when children are 15, 16 or 17 that they decide whether they want to be a doctor, an engineer, a politician or go to the Mars or moon. That is the time they start having a dream, and that's the time you can work on them. You can help them shape their dreams.
I went through withdrawal when I got out of graduate school. It's what you learn, what you think. That's all that counts.
Books won't stay banned. They won't burn. Ideas won't go to jail.
Many think of memory as rote learning, a linear stuffing of the brain with facts, where understanding is irrelevant. When you teach it properly, with imagination and association, understanding becomes a part of it.
Let grammar, punctuation, and spelling into your life! Even the most energetic and wonderful mess has to be turned into sentences.
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