When we are most practical

Some of my favourite blogs – Matt Jones, Pat Kane and Paul Miller – have already used this quote from Philip Pullman, but it so Purposive Drift that I can’t resist posting it here:
“…It’s when we do this foolish, time-consuming, romantic, quixotic, childlike thing called play that we are most practical, most useful, and most firmly grounded in reality, because the world itself is the most unlikely of places, and it works in the oddest of ways, and we wont make any sense of it by doing what everybody else has done before us. Its when we fool about with the stuff the world is made of that we make the most valuable discoveries, we create the most lasting beauty, we discover the most profound truths. The youngest children can do it, and the greatest artists, the greatest scientists do it all the time. Everything else is proofreading.”