Every island to a child is a treasure island.
P. D. JamesRead
Great literature cannot grow from a neglected or impoverished soil. Only if we actually tend or care will it transpire that every hundred years or so we might get a Middlemarch.
Interpretation
Great literature requires nurturing and attention to flourish.
This quote by P. D. James suggests that for significant literary works to emerge, they must be cultivated in an environment that values and supports literature. Neglectful or poor conditions yield little creativity and innovation, whereas a dedication to the literary arts can produce timeless masterpieces, akin to 'Middlemarch' by George Eliot, which is regarded as one of the great novels in English literature.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of supporting local writers, one might quote P. D. James to emphasize the need for nurturing literary talent.
Every island to a child is a treasure island.
If from infancy you treat children as gods, they are liable in adulthood to act as devils.
I believe that political correctness can be a form of linguistic fascism, and it sends shivers down the spine of my generation who went to war against fascism.
What a child doesn't receive he can seldom later give.
Open your mind to new experiences, particularly to the study of other people. Nothing that happens to a writer – however happy, however tragic – is ever wasted.
It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life.
The only imaginative prose writer of the slightest value who has appeared among the English-speaking races for some years past.
Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.
Fiction and essays can create empathy for the theoretical stranger.
Quite, quite,' she thought with a little sigh. 'It's always like this in their adventures. To save and be saved. I wish somebody would write a story sometime about the people who warm up the heroes afterward.
When we talk about books, we rarely talk about the economic side of writing, especially of writing literary works, and that, at base, it's a pretty costly enterprise.
The quietness of his tone italicized the malice of his reply.
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