Growing up, books were my lifeline, and I owe a debt to those writers that can never be repaid. They saved my sanity and gave me a world I could escape to. If I can pay that forward to another person, that's all I ask.
Interpretation
Books can provide comfort and escape, influencing our lives profoundly.
In this quote, Sherrilyn Kenyon expresses gratitude towards the writers whose books played a crucial role in her life during her formative years. She highlights how literature served as a refuge, preserving her mental wellbeing and offering an alternate reality, and reflects on the importance of passing on that gift to others, emphasizing a cycle of sharing knowledge and comfort through reading.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of reading in schools, this quote could be shared to illustrate how books can impact individuals.
Anyone can battle for pride, power, vanity, greed, or hate, but war should always be approached with an equal measure of wisdom and strength. It's not just enough to know when to fight, but to know when to lay down the sword and negotiate. Not everything in the world is worth fighting for.
Every person you meet is waging his or her own war against a callous universe that is plotting against them.
If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it was, and always will be yours. If it never returns, it was never yours to begin with.
History can come in handy. If you were born yesterday, with no knowledge of the past, you might easily accept whatever the government tells you. But knowing a bit of history--while it would not absolutely prove the government was lying in a given instance--might make you skeptical, lead you to ask questions, make it more likely that you would find out the truth.
It's not good enough to give it tender, loving care, to supply it with breakfast foods, to buy it expensive educations. Those things don't mean anything unless this generation has a future. And we're not sure that it does.
I sat down in 1989 and I made up my mind at that point that I was going to spend the rest of my life assisting women and youth to gain social and political empowerment through business and education. I convinced myself economic empowerment of women was going to be key, especially in a country like this where most women didn't go to school.
No man ever yet thought whether he was preaching well without weakening his sermon.
Children, after all, are not just adults-in-the-making. They are people whose current needs and rights and experiences must be taken seriously.
All the movements of our body are not merely those dictated by impulse or weariness; they are the correct expression of what we consider decorous. Without impulses, we could take no part in social life; on the other hand, without inhibitions, we could not correct, direct, and utilize our impulses.
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