The experienced writer says to the anguished novice: 'Just do it; get something, anything, on to the screen or page, just establish a flow of words, and criticise them later.' You give this advice but can't always take it.
Hilary MantelRead
But an experienced reader is also a self-aware and critical reader. I can't remember ever reading a story without judging it.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote emphasizes the importance of being a critical and self-aware reader while engaging with literature.
Hilary Mantel suggests that an experienced reader not only absorbs the story but also actively evaluates and critiques it. This reflective process enhances the reading experience and fosters a deeper understanding of the text, showing that reading is not just passive consumption but an interactive dialogue between the reader and the narrative.
Themes
ReadingCritiqueSelf-AwarenessLiteratureEvaluation
In practice
Example use cases
During a book club discussion, you might reference this quote to highlight the importance of analyzing the text.
More from Hilary Mantel
All quotes βHistory is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
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Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.
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He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.
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It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
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History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
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Similar quotes
The study of history is the best medicine for a sick mind; for in history you have a record of the infinite variety of human experience plainly set out for all to see; and in that record you can find yourself and your country both examples and warnings; fine things to take as models, base things rotten through and through, to avoid.
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The 'futures' and 'careers' for which American students now prepare are for the most part intellectual and moral wastelands. This chrome-plated consumers' paradise would have us grow up to be well-behaved children. But an important minority of men and women coming to the front today have shown they will die rather than be standardized, replaceable, and irrelevant.
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Max Weber was right in subscribing to the view that one need not be Caesar in order to understand Caesar. But there is a temptation for us theoretical sociologists to act sometimes as though it is not necessary even to study Caesar in order to understand him. Yet we know that the interplay of theory and research makes both for understanding of the specific case and expansion of the general rule.
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Study without desire spoils the memory, and it retains nothing that it takes in.
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For every fresh stage in our lives we need a fresh education, and there is no stage for which so little educational preparation is made as that which follows the reproductive period.
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Free the child's potential, and you will transform him into the world.
Maria MontessoriRead