A great book should leave you with many experiences, and slightly exhausted. You should live several lives while reading it.
Interpretation
A powerful book immerses the reader in diverse experiences, making them feel as if they have lived multiple lives.
William Styron articulates the transformative power of literature, suggesting that a truly great book not only entertains but also enriches the reader's life by offering deep, varied experiences. The act of reading should be an engaging journey that leaves one feeling a sense of fulfillment and emotional fatigue, akin to living through multiple lifetimes.
In practice
During a book club meeting discussing the latest novel.
The madness of depression is, generally speaking, the antithesis of violence. It is a storm indeed, but a storm of murk. Soon evident are the slowed-down responses, near paralysis, psychic energy throttled back close to zero. Ultimately, the body is affected and feels sapped, drained.
my brain had begun to endure its familiar siege: panic and dislocation, and a sense that my thought processes were being engulfed by a toxic and unnameable tide that obliterated any enjoyable response to the living world.
The pain of severe depression is quite unimaginable to those who have not suffered it.
This was not judgment day - only morning. Morning: excellent and fair.
In depression . . . faith in deliverance, in ultimate restoration, is absent. The pain is unrelenting, and what makes the condition intolerable is the foreknowledge that no remedy will come - - not in a day, an hour, a month, or a minute . . . It is hopelessness even more than pain that crushes the soul.
Writing is a fine therapy for people who are perpetually scared of nameless threats... for jittery people.
The instructor can scarcely give sensibility where it is essentially wanting, nor talent to the unpercipient block. But he can cultivate and direct the affections of the pupil, who puts forth, as a parasite, tendrils by which to cling, not knowing to what - to a supporter or a destroyer.
Every time you make a rule you take away a choice, and choice, with all of its illuminating repercussions, is the fuel for learning.
Reading is the creative center of a writer's life." -
Though we do need more women to graduate with technical degrees, I always like to remind women that you don't need to have science or technology degrees to build a career in tech.
If the truth is told, the youth can grow.
I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.
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