Reading is socially accepted disassociation. You flip a switch and you’re not there anymore. It’s better than heroin. More effective and cheaper and legal.
Interpretation
Reading allows individuals to escape from reality and immerse themselves in different worlds, often seen as a healthier option for disassociation than drugs.
This quote by Mary Karr suggests that reading provides a deep form of escapism that can temporarily detach individuals from their reality. It highlights the power of literature to transport readers to different realms, serving as a more beneficial and accessible alternative to substance abuse for coping with life's challenges.
In practice
In a book club discussion about the therapeutic effects of reading.
There's a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch between taking in and letting out that's a perfect zero you can go into. There's a rest point between the heart muscle's close and open - an instant of keenest living when you're momentarily dead. You can rest there.
Mother’s particular devils had remained mysterious to me for decades. So had her past. Few born liars ever intentionally embark in truth’s direction, even those who believe that such a journey might axiomatically set them free.
I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years.
I always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world.
Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down.
My idea of art is, you write something that makes people feel so strongly that they get some conviction about who they want to be or what they want to do. It's morally useful not in a political way, but it makes your heart bigger; it's emotionally and spiritually empowering.
The student who uses home made apparatus, which is always going wrong, often learns more than one who has the use of carefully adjusted instruments, to which he is apt to trust and which he dares not take to pieces.
Education, the great mumbo jumbo and fraud of the age purports to equip us to live and is prescribed as a universal remedy for everything from juvenile delinquency to premature senility.
They said, we have education, but what about jobs? So I started telling them, you should be taking a pledge, and the pledge should be: 'I'm not a job seeker; I'm a job giver.' Prepare yourself to be a job giver.
Teaching players during practices was what coaching was all about to me.
No teaching could be more direct than just to sit down.
Never begrudge the money you spend on your own education.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.