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.
Read. Read every chance you get. Read to keep growing. Read history. Read poetry. Read for pure enjoyment. Read a book called Life on a Little Known Planet. It's about insects. It will make you feel better.
Teenagers have more intense reading experiences because they've had fewer of them. It's like the first time you fall in love. You have a connection to that first person you fell in love with because it was so intense and unprecedented.
If you intend to study the mind, you must have systematic training; you must practice to bring the mind under your control.
I think the cardinal rule of learning to write is learning to read first. I learned to write by learning to read.
The writers we absorb when we're young bind us to them, sometimes lightly, sometimes with iron. In time, the bonds fall away, but if you look very closely you can sometimes make out the pale white groove of a faded scar, or the telltale chalky red of old rust.
Children want the same things we want. To laugh, to be challenged, to be entertained, and delighted.
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