You Own What You Read

“Thomas Jefferson went through the New Testament and removed all the miracles, leaving only the teachings. Take a source, extract what appeals to you, discard the rest. Such an act of editorship is bound to reflect something of the individual doing the editing: a plaster cast of an aesthetic—not the actual thing, but the imprint of it.”

– David Shields, Reality Hunger

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“Reading is an adventure…

Yet as we travel deeper into the strange world of the story, the feeling we get is of being understood – which is odd when you think about it, because at school learning is based on whether or not we understand what we are reading. In fact it is the story (or the poem) that is understanding us. Books read us back to ourselves. And one of the things the story teaches us is this: Read yourself as a fiction as well as a fact…

The escape into another story reminds us that we too are another story. Not caught, not confined, not predestined, not only one gender or passion. Learning to read yourself as a fiction as well as a fact is liberating – it is the difference between energy and mass. Mass is the beloved object – the world we can touch and feel – but mass is also the dead weight in ourselves and others. Shifting the dead weight takes energy but at its atomic core the dead weight is energy. Transforming mass into energy, energy into mass is what creative work is about. An idea becomes embodied. A tragedy is released.”

– Jeanette Winterson, Introduction to Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit

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There are no rules to how we should read.

If someone has published their ideas we have no obligation to use everything.

There is freedom in skipping pages and ignoring what we find reductive.

By having an open mind and confident editing, all books can be useful.

I have my own agenda when I read.

To better understand myself.

Everything I read becomes a fuel to energise me.

Now this post has been published it’s not my possession anymore.

Feel free to extract, discard or completely ignore.

This could be the energy you need.

Or not.