“ Enlightenment, and the death which comes before it, is the primary business of Varanasi. ”
Stories are not like the real world, they aren't held back by what we know is false or true. What's important is how a story makes you feel inside.
~ Tahir Shah
My father used to tell me that stories offer the listener a chance to escape but, more importantly, he said, they provide people with a chance to maximize their minds. Suspend ordinary constraints, allow the imagination to be freed, and we are charged with the capability of heighetned thought.Learn to use your eyes as if they are your ears, he said, and you become connected with the ancient heritage of man, a dream world for the waking mind.
Once in a very long time you come across a book that is far, far more than the ink, the glue and the paper, a book that seeps into your blood. With such a book the impact isn't necessarily obvious at first...but the more you read it and re-read it, and live with it, and travel with it, the more it speaks to you, and the more you realize that you cannot live without that book. It's then that the wisdom hidden inside, the seed, is passed on.
There comes a stage at which a man would rather die cleanly by a bullet than by the unknown terror of the phantom in the forest.
