Try any goddam thing you like, no matter how boringly normal or outrageous. If it works, fine. If it doesn't, toss it. Toss it even if you love it.
Stephen KingRead
If you can remember all the accessories that go with your best outfit, the contents of your purse, the starting lineup of the New York Yankees or the Houston Oilers, or what label "Hang On Sloopy" by The McCoys was on, you are capable of remembering the differences between a gerund (verb form used as a noun) and a participle (verb form used as an adjective).
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes that if you can remember detailed information about various topics, you can also learn and understand complex grammar concepts.
Stephen King suggests that our ability to remember intricate details about seemingly unrelated subjects indicates that we have the capacity to grasp and differentiate between grammatical elements like gerunds and participles. This serves as a reminder that learning and memory are interconnected, and that proficiency in language can be achieved by recognizing our cognitive capabilities.
Themes
EducationMemoryLearningLanguageGrammar
In practice
Example use cases
Using the quote during a presentation about the importance of learning can inspire students to take their studies more seriously.
More from Stephen King
All quotes →Eddie discovered one of his childhood's great truths. Grownups are the real monsters, he thought.
Stephen KingRead
Hairstyles change, and skirt lengths, and slang, but high school administrations? Never.
Stephen KingRead
Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.
Stephen KingRead
That's the day's business. Thinking. Thinking and isolation, because it doesn't matter if you pass the time of day with someone or not; in the end, you're alone. He seemed to have put in as many miles in his brain as he had with his feet. The thoughts kept coming and there was no way to deny them.
Stephen KingRead
Late last night and the night before, tommyknockers, tommyknockers knocking on my door. I wanna go out, don't know if I can 'cuz I'm so afraid of the tommyknocker man.
Stephen KingRead
Similar quotes
However my parents - both of whom came from impoverished backgrounds and neither of whom had been to college, took the view that my overactive imagination was an amusing quirk that would never pay a mortgage or secure a pension.
J. K. RowlingRead
Education should foster; this education is meant to repress. Education should inspire; this education is meant to tame. Education should harden; this education is meant to enervate. The English are too wise a people to attempt to educate the Irish in any worthy sense. As well expect them to arm us.
Patrick PearseRead
We need literature because we wouldn’t fully know ourselves without it. We need good literature to be fully human.
Edwidge DanticatRead
So I think that good journalism helps you to zoom out, to focus on the structural forces that govern our lives. And I think that good journalism is also not only about the problems, but also about the solutions, and the people who are working on these solutions.
Rutger BregmanRead
One can learn anything, anything at all, I thought, if provided by a gifted and passionate teacher.
Pat ConroyRead
Here’s how a child listens: you tell him something, and he puts his own interpretation on what you said. That’s what he hears. No one has ever heard you.
Byron KatieRead