Reality is like a doughnut: Everything that is good and funny and juicy is outside the center, which is just emptiness.
Interpretation
Reality has a core of emptiness, while the richness of life is found in the outer experiences.
Olga Tokarczuk's quote suggests that the essence of reality is not found at its center, which represents emptiness, but rather in the myriad of experiences and joys that exist outside of that center. It highlights the complexity and richness of life, indicating that true fulfillment and humor lie in exploring and embracing the external aspects of existence rather than getting caught up in the void at the core.
In practice
This quote can be used in a motivational speech to emphasize the importance of embracing life's adventures.
But the fact is we did have colonies in the east of Poland, we did have a slave economy there. But this is not common knowledge - or part of our national myth. It goes against the current romanticised view of the government, and much of the country, that Poles have always been victims, never oppressors.
My books are not 'political.' I don't make political demands. They actually describe life. But when we look at human life, politics creeps in everywhere.
I think that first-person narration is very characteristic of contemporary optics, in which the individual performs the role of subjective center of the world.
The world is a fabric we weave daily on the great looms of information, discussions, films, books, gossip, little anecdotes.
I first read Sigmund Freud's 'Beyond the Pleasure Principle' as a young girl, and it helped me to understand that there are thousands of possible ways to interpret our experience, that everything has a meaning, and that interpretation is the key to reality. This was the first step to becoming a writer.
Well-written novels make you more empathetic towards other people. You can identify with someone who isn't you. You can change your identity. A 14-year-old boy can become Anna Karenina. It is a miracle.
The fact that labour is external to the worker, i.e., it does not belong to his intrinsic nature; that in his work, therefore he does not affirm himself but denies himself, does not feel content but unhappy, does not develop freely his physical and mental energy but mortifies his body and his mind. The worker therefore only feels himself outside his work, and in his work feels outside himself.
Iβm beginning to know myself. I donβt exist. Iβm the space between what Iβd like to be and what others made of me. Just let me be at ease and all by myself in my room.
What can any one person do?' he said. 'Each person does a little something,' I said, 'and there you are.
Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet.
To drop into being means to recognize your interconnectedness with all life, and with being itself. Your very nature is being part of larger and larger spheres of wholeness.
Well, Page, I do wish the Devil had old Cooke, for I am sure I never was so tired of an old dull scoundrel in my life ... But the old-fellows say we must read to gain knowledge; and gain knowledge to make us happy and be admired. Mere jargon! Is there any such thing as happiness in this world? No.
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