““...a novel for me is a pretext, a way of starting up and sustaining a complicated and many layered inner exchange, a to-and-fro which I long ago discovered that I need in order to locate myself in the world. Reading...keeps the inner realm open, susceptible. Involvement in a book sets things going at a depth. If I cannot sink into some virtual 'other' place or triangulate my experience with that of another, I feel that my life is lacking the shadows and overtones and illusion of added dimension that imagination provides. It feels flat to me.””
![“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)
