I think we under-estimate how many people are miserable because they have no enthusiasms, no hobbies, because they gave up reading and quit learning when school ended. It's shocking how much studying a beloved subject elevates your mood. It will transform your life.

C. S. Lewis said it best:

People are only just learning that “peter” is a verb. Yesterday someone was branded pretentious for using the word “foliage.” The dangerous thing about not reading is that it limits your communication, your imagination, and the scope of what’s possible. You inhabit a tiny world.

You need a hobby that requires using your hands: baking, knitting, rock climbing, Lego building, whatever. And you also need an activity that stimulates your mind: reading, learning a new language, Soduku, word searches, the crossword

Jane Austen's 250th birthday is coming up in December and I hope you'll celebrate by taking a turn about the room, acquiring a passion for dead leaves & closet shelves, and taking a fancy to the last person you could ever be prevailed upon to marry.

I encourage everyone to read the Divine Comedy, which is a cornerstone of literature and culture. At no point does Dante portray himself as an awesome chad; he's a sinner in need of purification before he can experience the Beatific Vision.

I'm sorry but I find it slightly depressing that someone who's never read Dante can post this garbled, hugely misleading synopsis and get applause all around. We've become a culture that only engages with great books via memes & jokes while the books themselves gather dust.

This is the time of year for a favourite Old English word: the leaves are 'fallowing', from the verb fealwian, 'to turn yellow-gold'. In Anglo-Saxon poetry fealo (fallow) is the pale golden shade of fire, linden shields, sword hilts and autumn leaves. They fallow, then they fall.

If you're using AI to write essays, something everyone was capable of doing until the day before yesterday, I think less of you as a person. Surrendering your mental abilities to a machine is an embarrassing thing and you should be ashamed to admit doing it in public.

I think we under-estimate how many people are miserable because they have no enthusiasms, no hobbies, because they gave up reading and quit learning when school ended. It's shocking how much studying a beloved subject elevates your mood. It will transform your life.

For the past year I've been doing focused reading on medieval literature, English history, the folklore of Scotland and Wales, and I can't express how just learning things changes a person. It will make you more interesting. You will fall in love with this world.

The tragedy of our times is that we could be the most educated generation in history, but people are actively choosing ignorance & illiteracy. We have all the resources of knowledge and we've used them to build machines that make us dumber.

The above quote is taken from @RealGDT's introduction to a new Penguin edition of Frankenstein; the whole essay is worth reading: https://t.co/OmU6xperyv

Guillermo del Toro; this is why we need fantasy

I hope the failures of AI will dispel once for all the notion that intelligence is the sole measure of a person. Compassion, curiosity, wisdom, imagination, these are the value of a life. AI can mimic that, but can never possess it.

It sounds crazy but I promise you: if you just put your phone aside and read for half an hour each night before bed, it will change your life.

Now up on YouTube, my recent talk about how Tolkien's work connects to the special season of the year that follows the autumnal equinox - Michaelmas, Winterfylleð, Durin's Day, Eärendil, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and more... https://t.co/OhDEfmZlT4

Pullman and C. S. Lewis couldn't be more different, but they both share an abiding sense that stories of ghosts, witches and dragons are important, that they matter, and that our lives are infinitely poorer without them.

There’s a great line in Philip Pullman’s new book—“Without imagination you never see the truth about anything … You think you see more truth, but in fact you see less”—& I can’t help feeling that to dismiss folklore & myth because they aren’t true is a kind of spiritual poverty.

The tragedy of our times is that we could be the most educated generation in history, but people are actively choosing ignorance & illiteracy. We have all the resources of knowledge and we've used them to build machines that make us dumber.