In the end, what makes a book valuable is not the paper it's printed on, but the thousands of hours of work by dozens of people who are dedicated to creating the best possible reading experience for you.
Interpretation
The value of a book lies in the effort and dedication of its creators, not just the physical materials.
This quote by John Green emphasizes that the true worth of a book is derived from the extensive labor and commitment that authors, editors, and publishers invest in crafting a quality reading experience. It highlights the collaborative nature of literature and suggests that appreciation for books should extend beyond their physical form to the countless hours of creativity and diligence involved in their creation.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literature and education.
Always' was a promise! How can you just break the promise?" "Sometimes people don't always understand the promises they're making when they make them," I said. Isaac shot me a look. "Right, of course. But you keep the promise anyway. That's what love is. Love is keeping the promise anyway. Don't you believe in true love?" I didn't answer. I didn't have an answer. But I thought that if true love did exist, that was a pretty good definition of it.
Augustus Waters was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won’t be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Gus knew. Gus knows. I will not tell you our love story, because—like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should.
I find it really offensive when people say that the emotional experiences of teenagers are less real or less important than those of adults. I am an adult, and I used to be a teenager, and so I can tell you with some authority that my feelings then were as real as my feelings are now.
I don't think pandemics make us afraid of death, I think they make us afraid of oblivion. They force us to grapple with the futility of effort. Also they make us barf which isn't fun either... Wash your hands, cover your coughs, and find a way to hold in balance the futility of effort with the necessity to struggle.
So often we try to make other people feel better by minimizing their pain, by telling them that it will get better (which it will) or that there are worse things in the world (which there are). But that's not what I actually needed. What I actually needed was for someone to tell me that it hurt because it mattered. I have found this very useful to think about over the years, and I find that it is a lot easier and more bearable to be sad when you aren't constantly berating yourself for being sad.
We kiss. Her hands are freezing on my face, and she tastes like coffee and the smell of the onion is still stuck in my nose, and my lips are all dry from the endless winter. And it's awesome.
Cultivation to the mind is as necessary as food to the body.
Ah yes, the head is full of books. The hard part is to force them down through the bloodstream and out through the fingers.
Even the worst book can give us something to think about.
When you have a conflict, that means that there are truths that have to be addressed on each side of the conflict. And when you have a conflict, then it's an educational process to try to resolve the conflict. And to resolve that, you have to get people on both sides of the conflict involved so that they can dialogue.
I think sometimes parents and teachers fail to stretch kids. My mother had a very good sense of how to stretch me just slightly outside my comfort zone.
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.
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