A book is…

“What an astonishing thing a book is. It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head, directly to you. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.”

I had run into the statement above by Carl Sagan a while ago, and saved it on my laptop inside my “Pending” files. Pending deliberations. Pending writings. Pending contemplations. And so on. My many posts on my blog site are proof enough – as you would agree, how fond I am of citing quotes from famous individuals. Or better yet, of making sense of my life’s various aspects with the help of those with wisdom to whose voiced experiences I end up connecting on various existential levels. Sagan’s enthusiastic manifestation of love for writing and reading had absolutely no chance escaping my attention. So, here it comes to you in the hope that we will infinitely succeed in “working magic.”