Dangerously Clever Books

Kell: Yeah. I have feelings every single day of my life.

Holland: Do you?

Kell: Are you saying you don’t have feelings?

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https://t.co/HvEnVH1FuP HERE YOU HAVE LINK TO FULL SPEECH AND Q&A! It’s a bit over 1h long, but it’s worth spending time on. Just find yourself a bit of peace and a cup of tea.

I would love to share my favorite quotes and topics from this lecture because it touched my heart and my soul so deeply that I could barely sleep at night tonight. And when I finally did fall asleep I’ve dreamt of this wise words and it is no joke nor exaggeration. I think I kind of needed this speech in my life at this time. I’ve cried through the whole lecture and I still have tears while thinking of it. Never been so touched by a speech. If you’re not willing to watch it, at least stop and look at some quotes and important topics Victoria/V.E. Schwab touched.

“Reading should be an act of love, of joy, of wiling discovery. That when we force someone across the wrong literary threshold we risk turning them away instead of ushering them through.”

After this quote she pointed out some books (in this speech it was about Tolkien’s books) that are required reading, which she said she finds to be a dangerous label. I love how later in this conversation she told us she challenged the person who said that. She asked why they say it is required and the person simply answered because it was what makes THEM a reader. That this books is important to THEM. I love how she compared finding our way to become a reader to simply the door. That Tolkien isn’t the only door to this. That some people found their door thanks to J.K. Rowling. I personally found them not thanks to authors or a certain book. I need to thank my mom for my love for reading. But I can consider certain authors who made me love reading even more, such as Cassandra Clare, Leigh Bardugo and of course V.E. Schwab. The point is; don’t say certain author or a book is REQUIRED TO READ to consider someone a reader. Let them find their door. Let them find it on their terms, on their own and let not tell people who just start their journey with books; if you won’t read this, you won’t be a reader. If you do not love these, you are not a reader. If these do not speak to you, you are not one of us. Because it does not matter which door you take as long as you find one.

I wanted to be a storyteller and I didn’t know what shape that would take. I kept being told to find a lane, to stay in it and I chafed at the idea that I had to choose a single form. It was like being told to pick a certain size box not knowing if you’ll always fit, suspecting you won’t

We all need someone to show us that writing isn’t boxes, that you don’t have to fit in one. You don’t actually have to fit at all.

People ask me why I write fantasy. I used to only have one answer; because I gre up wanting the world to be stranger then it was. Now I think what I meant what I mean is that I also wanted the world to be more.

Victoria talked about how in her childhood she was looking for some hidden doors and confinced herslef she couldn’t enter them because she forgot the passwords. She spend her youth looking for magic and doors, for other worlds. She couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something more. I cannot tell you how much I can relate to this. I was a child who was always looking for magic in these world (I still consider myself as someone who is looking for these magic, just a little bit older). I would love to quote her words that describes me the most and probably also touched me the most; I grew up wanting the world to be stranger than it was in large part because I hadn’t found my place in the version that was or rather I’d only found my place in the pages of books. I guess most of people who read books use them as an escape. My first escape was Cassandra Clare’s book City of Bones and it has been 9 years since I reached for it. I always read books, I always enjoyed them but the first one that showed me these amazing power, magic that they own was CoB. And I would never stop being thankful for it. I never went looking for happiness, never folded myself up in romance. What I wanted were the adventures.

If I only could I would quote the whole lecture here... though I’m pretty sure it’s illegal since I’ve never asked for the permission. My probably favorite part when it comes to this speech was about her adversarial nature when it comes to fear. That she was afraid to write a book so she just wrote it. Because she’s scared of hights she went skydiving. For me it is something so strange yet so inspiring to overcome my own fears. She thought she doesn’t have the the attention span, that she wasn’t smart enough to build something that large. She was simply afraid of the failour but still Victoria overcame it. And by doing this she showed the world she can do everything. If you really want something you have to face your fears. If you want to become a bigger. more powerful you then you have to fight. 

I could simply write in forever about this lecture. But I won’t. Here you have ONLY a bit of these amazing and powerful speech. I will only post three more  quotes that I personally would love to share with you. The quotes that spoke to me the most, the ones that found the way to the door of my heart and soul. 

Stories are born from what if and that question will always be rooted in the known.

I don’t write to creat magic that isn’t already there. I write to access a magic that is. To amplify it so the others feel it it. I write fantasy to make cracks in the foundation of the reader’s expectations. To challenge the solidity of their assumptions and beliefs.

I will write what I love and what I long for in the hopes that for someone it might not only a way out but a way in. In short I will write in the hopes of writing someone else a door.

When I say fantasy I simply mean a story in which one foot or heel or toe is not planted on firm, familiar ground but my favorite fantasies are the ones where the other foot is. Where the line between the known and the new, the observable reality and the strange fantastic is dotted if not blurred. It goes back to my childhood searching those lake tahoe hills for cracks in the strone that might be doors because a fantasy set entirley in another world is an escapism with limits. You can read about it, sure, but you can never really get there. Fantasy with the door, a portal, a way in that breeds a different kind of belief.