Only by affirming the animateness of perceived things do we allow our words to emerge directly from the depths of our ongoing reciprocity with the world. — David Abram Copy Share Image
As nonhuman animals, plants, and even 'inanimate' rivers once spoke to our oral ancestors, so the ostensibly “inert” letters on the page now speak to us! This is a form of animism that we take for granted, but it is… — David Abram Copy Share Image
Does the human intellect, or "reason," really spring us free from our inherence in the depths of this wild proliferation of forms? Or on… — David Abram Copy Share Image
“Human language, for us moderns, has swung in on itself, turning its back on the beings around us. Language is a human property, suitable… — David Abram Copy Share Image
Only as the written text began to speak would the voices of the forest, and of the river, begin to fade. And only then… — David Abram Copy Share Image
Each place its own mind, its own psyche! Oak, Madrone, Douglas fir, red-tailed hawk, serpentine in the sandstone, a certain scale to the topography,… — David Abram Copy Share Image
What is magic? In the deepest sense, magic is an experience. It's the experience of finding oneself alive within a world that is itself… — David Abram Copy Share Image
Other animals, in a constant and mostly unmediated relation with their sensory surroundings, think with the whole of their bodies. — David Abram Copy Share Image
The telling of stories, like singing and praying, would seem to be an almost ceremonial act, an ancient and necessary mode of speech that… — David Abram Copy Share Image
Such reciprocity is the very structure of perception. We experience the sensuous world only by rendering ourselves vulnerable to that world. Sensory perception is… — David Abram Copy Share Image
“Ecologically considered, it is not primarily our verbal statements that are "true" or "false," but rather the kind of relations that we sustain with… — David Abram Copy Share Image
A particular place in the land is never, for an oral culture, just a passive or inert setting for the human events that occur… — David Abram Copy Share Image
If, on the other hand, we wish to describe a particular phenomenon without repressing our direct experience, then we cannot avoid speaking of the… — David Abram Copy Share Image
We are human only in contact, and conviviality, with what is not human. — David Abram Copy Share Image
