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.
To improve at chess you should in the first instance study the endgame.
I've had a lot of fun, and when I talk to kids in journalism schools, I say, look, I know what the journalism teachers tell you that this is a great way to perform public service and all that, but I say the main reason, if you decide what you want to do is be a reporter, the main reason you want to do it is because it's just so much fun.
Both teachers and learners go to sleep at their post as soon as there is no enemy in the field.
I believe that in the pursuit of education, individual desire is more influential than institution, and personal faith more forceful than faculty.
No one should be held back from realising their potential by fears that they will not be able to afford to go to university or that they will graduate with unmanageable levels of debt.
Our higher education system is one of the things that makes America exceptional. There's no place else that has the assets we do when it comes to higher education. People from all over the world aspire to come here and study here. And that is a good thing.
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