The object we call a book is not the real book, but its potential, like a musical score or seed. It exists fully only in the act of being read; and its real home is inside the head of the reader, where the symphony resounds, the seed germinates. A book is a heart that only beats in the chest of another.
Rebecca SolnitLeave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. Thatโs where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.
Rebecca SolnitThe art is not one of forgetting but letting go. And when everything else is gone, you can be rich in loss.
Rebecca SolnitThe famous Zen parable about the master for whom, before his studies, mountains were only mountains, but during his studies mountains were no longer mountains, and afterward mountains were again mountains could be interpreted as an alleory about [the perpetual paradox that when one is closest to a destination one is also the farthest).
Rebecca SolnitSolitude in the city is about the lack of other people or rather their distance beyond a door or wall, but in remote places it isnโt an absence but the presence of something else, a kind of humming silence in which solitude seems as natural to your species as to any other, words strange rocks you may or may not turn over.
Rebecca SolnitTo lose yourself: a voluptuous surrender, lost in your arms, lost to the world, utterly immersed in what is present so that its surroundings fade away. In Benjaminโs terms, to be lost is to be fully present, and to be fully present is to be capable of being in uncertainty and mystery.
Rebecca Solnit