Thursday Thoughts...

"Have books ‘happened’ to you? Unless your answer to that question is ‘yes,’ I’m unsure how to talk to you." 

 Haruki Murakami

I read this quote and at first felt a little bit affronted by it. It seemed a touch supercilious or a bit condescending perhaps.

Clearly Haruki Murakami is a very talented and legendary writer, and I hoped that he wasn't really being either supercilious or condescending. I thought about it, and perhaps it is just a way of him saying that books really matter to me. They absorb my thinking; they fill my days; I think about them as I eat; I dream about them when I sleep. For him, perhaps books are all encompassing. Perhaps they are truly his life.

And then I imagined that if this were the case, he might simply be saying that I interpret my whole world through books. I understand the world through books. Books are the prism through which I perceive everything. In essence I speak books; they are my language.

And so perhaps he was saying that I have no way of talking or speaking that isn't about books;  and if we don't share this language then perhaps I might need an interpreter...