So much bigger on the inside.

For my first post on OtherWords, I wanted to write something about the books and words that make my life big and exciting and familiar and foreign. There's a John Green quote that I've always loved and which pretty much sums it up. In The Fault in Our Stars, he wrote many things that made me think that he was writing that book just for me. But there was one particular moment that made me cry with the truth of it:

"Sometimes, you read a book and it fills you with this weird evangelical zeal, and you become convinced that the shattered world will never be put back together unless and until all living humans read the book. And then there are some books ... which you can't tell people about, books so special and rare and yours that advertising your affection feels like a betrayal." 

When I finished reading The Fault in Our Stars, I went straight onto John Green's website and left and very creepy and stalker-like message in which I confessed that I wanted to tell him everything about myself because I felt like he already knew. I also knew that I had found a book that demonstrated its own point to perfection and illustrated everything that is powerful and and brilliant about writing. It's a book that I simultaneously wanted to recommend to everyone I'd ever met as perfection between electric blue covers, and at the same time never EVER wanted anyone to ever read ever again because it was just mine. So my point is this: writing and narrative is resplendent in its magnificent complexity. It's the TARDIS of art forms: small and unassuming on the outside (what looks magnificent about a closed penguin paperback?) and infinite in size, possibility and depth on the inside (seriously though, what is UP is Hamlet's head? Four-hundred years later, and NOBODY KNOWS). So that's why I read, and that's why I want to write.