One of the convenient things about literature is that, despite copyrights [...] a book belongs to the reader as well as to the writer.
Interpretation
Literature is a shared space where both readers and writers hold ownership, transcending intellectual property.
This quote by Anne Fadiman highlights the unique relationship between literature and its audience, emphasizing that once a book is read, it becomes part of the reader's experience and interpretation, even in the face of copyright laws. It suggests that the power of literature lies in its ability to connect people, allowing readers to claim their own understanding and meaning from the text, making it a collaborative creation between writer and reader.
In practice
During a book club discussion, one might say this quote to emphasize the mutual relationship between readers and authors.
Muses are fickle, and many a writer, peering into the voice, has escaped paralysis by ascribing the creative responsibility to a talisman: a lucky charm, a brand of paper, but most often a writing instrument. Am I writing well? Thank my pen. Am I writing badly? Don't blame me blame my pen. By such displacements does the fearful imagination defend itself.
Books wrote our life story, and as they accumulated on our shelves (and on our windowsills, and underneath our sofa, and on top of our refrigerator), they became chapters in it themselves.
...the reader who plucks a book from her shelf only once is as deprived as the listener who, after attending a single performance of a Beethoven symphony, never hears it again.
If you truly love a book, you should sleep with it, write in it, read aloud from it, and fill its pages with muffin crumbs.
My brother and I were able to fantasize far more extravagantly about our parents' tastes and desires, their aspirations and their vices, by scanning their bookcases than by snooping in their closest. Their selves were on their shelves.
Of course, my interests and my focus change and become more diverse, more worldly. At the same time, I am interested in the simple basics, which is I love to dance and I love to make people dance.
The listener must be gripped and whether he likes it or not, drawn into the flight path of the sounds without special training being necessary. The sensual shock must be just as forceful as when one hears a clap of thunder or looks into a bottomless abyss
A poem is a naked person... Some people say that I am a poet.
I like so many different kinds of music that I've never allowed myself the limitations of one particular range.
I never see one woman when I design, it's always a universe of women
The whole problem can be stated quite simply by asking "Is there a meaning to music?" My answer would be, "Yes", And "Can you state in so many words what the meaning is?" My answer to that would be "No."
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