“We never know, do we, if the future is just more of the present pushed forward, or whether the look and feel, not to mention the fundamental essence of life might not be changing” — Sven Birkerts Copy Share Image
Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm,… — Sven Birkerts Copy Share Image
“It is in adolescence that most of us grasp that life--our own life--is a problem to be solved, that a set of personal unknowns… — Sven Birkerts Copy Share Image
“What reading does...is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that life is not sequenced of lived moments, but a destiny.” — Sven Birkerts Copy Share Image
I speak as an unregenerate reader, one who still believes that language and not technology is the true evolutionary miracle. I have not yet given up on the idea that the experience of literature offers a kind of wisdom that cannot be discovered elsewhere; that there is profundity in the verbal encounter itself, never mind what further profundities that author… — Sven Birkerts Copy Share
Every place, once unique, itself, is strangely shot through with radiations from every other place. ‘There’ was then; ‘here’ is now. — Sven Birkerts Copy Share Image
To achieve deep focus nowadays is also to have struck a blow against the dissipation of self; it is to have strengthened one's essential… — Sven Birkerts Copy Share Image
Reading, because we control it, is adaptable to our needs and rhythms. We are free to indulge our subjective associative impulse; the term I coin for this is deep reading: the slow and meditative possession of a book. We don't just read the words, we dream our lives in their vicinity. The printed page becomes a kind of wrought-iron fence… — Sven Birkerts Copy Share
“Everything in contemporary society discourages interiority. More and more of our exchanges take place via circuits, and in their very nature those interactions are… — Sven Birkerts Copy Share Image
A poem is a construction of inner space. Language is to inner space as light is to material space. — Sven Birkerts Copy Share Image
What reading does, ultimately, is keep alive the dangerous and exhilarating idea that life is not a sequence of lived moments, but a destiny. — Sven Birkerts Copy Share Image
![“Poetry springs directly from our primal need and capacity for communication[Poetry] mobilizes such a concentration of devices, such an intensification of language via rhythm, syntax, image and metaphor. Reading it-the best of it-can create another, very different kind of perpetual present, an…” quote by Sven Birkerts](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/c57/sven-birkerts-25191_awareness_poetry-springs-directly-from-our-primal_206738.jpg)
![“To achieve deep focus nowadays is also to have struck a blow against the dissipation of self; it is to have strengthened one's essential position [in life].” quote by Sven Birkerts](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/4ba/sven-birkerts-25191_achieve_to-achieve-deep-focus-nowadays-is-also-t_1097210.jpg)
