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Quote by Olga Tokarczuk

“There are two kinds of learning, from the inside and from the outside. The first is regarded as the best, or even the only kind. And so people learn through distant journeys, watching, reading, universities and lectures — they learn from what is happening outside them. Man is a stupid creature who has to learn. So he tacks knowledge onto himself, he gathers it like a bee, gaining more and more of it, putting it to use and processing it. But the thing inside that is “stupid” and needs learning doesn’t change.”

Quote by Olga Tokarczuk

Work

Primeval and Other Times

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Author

Olga Tokarczuk

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“That I commit to a life of opening and learning, that I commit to learning at a speed that is vigilant and awake, that I commit to knowing where my empathies lean and why they lean there, that I become increasingly familiar with the why of what raises my voice, that I become increasingly familiar with the why of what lulls me to silence, that I be haunted by the ghosts of who my silences have harmed, that I acknowledge that haunting is love, that I trust love lives in whatever points at the dark, that I acknowledge that shame would likely be my laziest gesture, that I stop denying I am a whole person, and my wholeness is often unlovable, and my wholeness is often lovable, that I own the possibility that there isn't a thing one could say about the person I am that I could wholeheartedly deny; All of it-yes, all of the ugly - yes, all of the beauty-, yes, I have failed and will continue to fail, I have loved and will continue to love, I am committed to leaning and opening, I want people around me who are committed to learning and opening, people who are failing and loving, people who are stalking their own vigilance, the speed of their own compassion saying, 'FASTER FASTER FASTER.”

“Musicians are our real teachers. They are opening us up politically with their lyrics and creatively with experimental, psychedelic music. They share their discoveries and journeys with us. We can’t travel far, no one I know has ever been on an aeroplane. ... whatever they experience, we experience through their songs. It’s true folk music — not played on acoustic guitar by a bearded bloke — but about true-life experiences.”