Sunday, March 6, 2011

a way of looking at things

This quote came up on my dashboard, reminding me why I love the History Boys so much:
The best moments in reading are when you come across something - a thought, a feeling, a way of looking at things - that you'd thought special, particular to you.  And here it is, set down by someone else, a person you've never met, maybe ever someone long dead.  And it's as if a hand has come out, and taken yours."
Perfectly expresses that feeling we've all had so many times in the midst of those little black lines.  There's something so intimate about reading and writing; I don't think I'll ever understand the power of words for bringing about beauty, bringing about understanding.

It's one of those quiet, melancholy afternoons where you could sit and be and watch the sun strain through the clouds with the occasional sigh and be perfectly content to do almost nothing besides breathing and tea-sipping if only the reality of pages needing to be typed were not hanging over your head.

2 comments:

  1. Can I step through your words and into that picture? I want to be experiencing the little miracles of writing instead of trying write myself.

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  2. I think this idea is even more true when the books find us that we declare our "favorites". In these, we find more than just a few lines, but instead an entire book that can, as they say, take our hands.
    Whenever life is particularly rough, I take out my favorite book and read it again, but only when I am really down. I never want it to get old, though I don't think it ever would, even if I did read it every day. But this book is more than just an idea or a nice turn of phrase; it's an old friend. It's like a person that somehow knows me as well as any living person even though the author lived in Germany and died when I was 5 and we will never know each other. Somehow, it's like he found the people who were like him because what he wrote spread into the world and found everyone who was drawn irresistibly to its cover and title. It's like we've all met somehow.
    Strange that writing down some words can change so much.

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