I'm kind of old-school and love nothing more than sitting, opening a book, and reading it. But I also love listening to audio books.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a passion for traditional reading while also appreciating modern audio formats.
Nick Cave's quote reflects a balance between the enduring pleasure of reading physical books and the convenience of modern audiobooks. It suggests that appreciation for literature can exist in multiple forms, highlighting the importance of both the tactile experience of reading and the accessibility offered by technology. This duality speaks to the evolving nature of how we consume stories and knowledge.
In practice
A book club discussion about the different ways people enjoy stories.
The idea of songwriting is a transformative thing, and what I do with songwriting is take situations that are quite ordinary and transform them in some way. Apart from things like the murder ballads, the songs I write, at their core, are quite ordinary human concerns, but the process of writing about them transforms them into something else.
The writer who refuses to explore the darker regions of the heart will never be able to write convincingly about the wonder, the magic and the joy of love for just as goodness cannot be trusted unless it has breathed the same air as evil.
But if you're gonna dine with them cannibals Sooner or later, darling, you're gonna get eaten . . .
Music is storming, driving, relentless, devotional, slinky, subtle, heartbreakingly-beautiful sounds that, lyrically, switch from the cynical to the sanguine, the defeated to the defiant, dealing in love, war, beauty, children, romance, rejection, Pethedine, poetry, panties, God, Auden, Johnny Cash, cold potatoes, too-much-money, not enough money, writer’s block, flowers, animals and more flowers. But maybe I’m projecting here.
Who knows their own story? It certainly makes no sense when you’re in the middle of it
And I wish that I was made of stone So that I would not have to see A beauty impossible to define A beauty impossible to believe A beauty impossible to endure The blood imparted in little sips The smell of you still on my hands As I bring the cup up to my lips No God up in the sky No devil beneath the sea Could do the job that you did, baby Of bringing me to my knees
To read is to withdraw.To make oneself unavailable. One would feel easier about it if the pursuit inself were less...selfish.
Books are alive, you see. They're not dead, they're alive.
There are many more want-to-be writers out there than good editors.
I'm spending more time at this library in four days than I did at the Eureka College Library in four years.
When I say history is a matter of life and death, I mean this: If you really don't know history, you are a victim of whatever the authorities tell you. You have no way of checking up on them. You have no way of deciding whether there is any truth in what they are saying.
When school district officials literally laughed at the notion that the Me Generation — this was the label for my generation — would jump at the chance to teach in urban and rural communities, their concerns, too, went unheard. My very greatest asset was that I simply did not understand what was impossible.
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