I can't add. I don't understand basic science. Or anything else. But I can read anything. I've always been able to, and I've always liked to. Even if I didn't understand it, I liked to.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the value of reading and curiosity over traditional academic skills.
Zadie Smith reflects on her educational experience, highlighting that while she may struggle with mathematical and scientific concepts, her passion for reading has propelled her understanding and appreciation of the world. This suggests that intellectual curiosity and the ability to engage with texts can be as significant as mastering traditional subjects.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literacy programs, I could refer to Zadie Smith's quote to highlight the need for fostering a love for reading.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.
You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.
He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
My modus operandi hasn't really changed that much from when I was an English teacher. I wanted my students to leave my classroom loving reading and wanting to read more, and if they left my classroom thinking that reading is boring, then I haven't done my job.
You write not for children but for yourself. And if by good fortune children enjoy what you enjoy, why then you are a writer of children's books.
Jacqueline Woodson's books are such a gift to parents and children for their poignant subtlety and lyricism and their willingness to let a reader dwell in the pangs of realization that we sometimes try to protect our children from.
One very common thing is that often very brilliant children stop working because they're praised so often that it's what they want to live as - brilliant - not as someone who ever makes mistakes. It really stunts their motivation.
Play is really the work of childhood.
People should be free to find or make for themselves the kinds of educational experience they want their children to have.
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