Only in dreams, in poetry, in play do we sometimes arrive at what we were before we were this thing that, who knows, we are.
Interpretation
The quote reflects on the idea that through dreams, art, and imagination, we can reconnect with our true selves beyond societal roles.
Julio Cortazar's quote suggests that in our daily lives, we often become trapped in our identities shaped by society and experience. However, it is in dreams, poetry, and playful moments that we can access a purer sense of self, revealing who we truly are beneath the layers of expectation and reality.
In practice
In a motivational speech about creativity, one might share this quote to encourage others to explore their imagination.
La Maga did not know that my kisses were like eyes which began to open up beyond her, and that I went along outside as if I saw a different concept of the world, the dizzy pilot of a black prow which cut the water of time and negated it.
Wordplay hides a key to reality that the dictionary tries in vain to lock inside every free word.
The best literature is always a take [in the musical sense]; there is an implicit risk in its execution, a margin of danger that is the pleasure of the flight, of the love, carrying with it a tangible loss but also a total engagement that, on another level, lends the theater its unparalleled imperfection faced with the perfection of film. I donβt want to write anything but takes.
When one wants to write, one writes. If one is condemned to write, one writes.
As if you could pick in love, as if it were not a lightning bolt that splits your bones and leaves you staked out in the middle of the courtyard. (...) You don't pick out the rain that soaks you to the skin when you come out of a concert.
You're like a witness. You're the one who goes to the museum and looks at the paintings. I mean the paintings are there and you're in the museum too, near and far away at the same time. I'm a painting. Rocamadour is a painting. Etienne is a painting, this room is a painting. You think that you're in the room but you're not. You're looking at the room, you're not in the room.
I can recall no parallel in history where a great nation recently at war has so distinguished its former enemy commander.
There is no repose for the mind except in the absolute; for feeling, except in the infinite; for the soul, except in the divine.
Terror is only justice: prompt, severe and inflexible; it is then an emanation of virtue; it is less a distinct principle than a natural consequence of the general principle of democracy, applied to the most pressing wants of the country.
I'm in a business where the only thing that matters is weight and appearance. That is so messed up. They might as well say 'Get younger,' because that's how easy it is.
Ethics is a code of values which guide our choices and actions and determine the purpose and course of our lives.
God damn! Drug dealers dealin' to the kiddies,_x000D_ _x000D_ Livin' in the city ain't no pity on the itty-bitty._x000D_ _x000D_ We try to cry, but still they all die,_x000D_ _x000D_ I try to speak to the youth, and the truth is: they all high.
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