Sven Birkerts Quotes

“What reading does, ultimately, is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that a life is not a sequence of lived moments, but a destiny...the time of reading, the time defined by the author's language resonating in the self, is not the world's time, but the soul's. The energies that otherwise tend to stream outward through a thousand channels of distraction are marshaled by the cadences of the prose; they are brought into focus by the fact that it is an ulterior, and entirely new, world that the reader has entered. The free-floating self--the self we diffusely commune with while driving or walking or puttering in the kitchen--is enlisted in the work of bringing the narrative to life. In the process, we are able to shake off the habitual burden of insufficient meaning and flex our deeper natures.”

“What reading does, ultimately, is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that a life is not a sequence of lived moments, but a destiny...the time of reading, the time defined by the author's language resonating in the self, is not the world's time, but the soul's. The energies that otherwise tend to stream outward through a thousand channels of distraction are marshaled by the cadences of the prose; they are brought into focus by the fact that it is an ulterior, and entirely new, world that the reader has entered. The free-floating self--the self we diffusely commune with while driving or walking or puttering in the kitchen--is enlisted in the work of bringing the narrative to life. In the process, we are able to shake off the habitual burden of insufficient meaning and flex our deeper natures.”

“Everything in contemporary society discourages interiority. More and more of our exchanges take place via circuits, and in their very nature those interactions are such as to keep us hovering in the virtual now, a place away from ourselves.”

“I often find that a novel, even a well-written and compelling novel, can become a blur to me soon after I've finished reading it. I recollect perfectly the feeling of reading it, the mood I occupied, but I am less sure about the narrative details. It is almost as if the book were, as Wittgenstein said of his propositions, a ladder to be climbed and then discarded after it has served its purpose.”

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“Quotes is just quotes, cannot change your world if you not do think in that quotes, so just go and do anything...”

“Coming up with a useful, meaningful quote is getting more and more challenging each day....and you can quote me on that.”

“To me, quotes function as the sunscreen against a writers brilliance. As soon as I cannot stand to look at the magnificence of the acropolis of pure thought the writer managed to doll out in the cognizant chaos - I quote him, and by doing so I am discharged and freed. On the other hand, even while I do acknowledge that some things cannot be quoted, I vehemently distrust any writer whose army of quotes does not consist of impeccable warriors but the sort of bootless canon fodder that caused one to write in the first place, wishing to circumlocute that strappant lot. No writer can ever recover from bad quotes. I check the army of quotes, and if it has no sporting chance against a simple pack of butter then I will simply never ever read this person. One often hears short stories are the benchmark of great writers, but if you ask me, I'd rather first look at their quotes.”

“Quote me as saying I was mis-quoted.”

“If all it takes to motivate you is a quote then this quote has nothing to say – except to go soar with the freakin’ eagles.”

“When I quote Scripture, I know I am quoting the very Word of God.”