There may be stranger reasons for being alive. There are books There’s interlibrary loan. There are books you can fall into and pull up over your head.
Interpretation
Books provide a unique escape and purpose in life, allowing individuals to immerse themselves in different worlds.
In this quote, Jo Walton emphasizes the power of literature as a means of existence and joy. She suggests that the act of reading is not merely a pastime but a profound reason for living, where books are not just objects but gateways to new experiences and realms of imagination. This sentiment portrays the significance of literature in shaping human experience and providing solace in many forms.
In practice
Sharing the quote during a book club meeting to express the value of reading.
The thing about Tolkien, about The Lord of the Rings, is that it's perfect. It's this whole world, this whole process of immersion, this journey. It's not, I'm pretty sure, actually true, but that makes it more amazing, that someone could make it all up. Reading it changes everything.
The living model, the naked body of a woman, is the privileged seat of feeling, but also of questioning... The model must mark you, awaken in you an emotion which you seek in turn to express.
The reason you do this stuff - comedy, plays, movies - is to be seized by something, to disappear in the service of an idea.
Every morning upon awakening, I experience a supreme pleasure: that of being Salvador Dali, and I ask myself, wonderstruck, what prodigious thing will he do today, this Salvador Dali.
That is why I believe that art is so much more significant than either economics or philosophy. It is the direct measure of man's spiritual vision.
The very paradigm of revolution, of right versus wrong, good versus bad, is a relic with no bearing on the present. Yet artists, exhibitions, and curators valorize the sixties. People who wrote about these artists 30 years ago still write about them in the same ways, often for the same magazines.
If they would, for Example, praise the Beauty of a Woman, or any other Animal, they describe it by Rhombs, Circles, Parallelograms, Ellipses, and other geometrical terms.
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