I think instead writers and publishers and readers need to go to the places where people are, and make the argument that there is great value to the quiet, contemplative process of reading a novel, that reading great books carefully offers pleasures and consolations that no iPad app ever can.
Interpretation
Reading is a valuable and contemplative process that digital experiences cannot replicate.
In this quote, John Green emphasizes the importance of engaging with literature in a deep and thoughtful manner, highlighting that the experience of reading physical books provides joys and comforts that cannot be matched by digital media like apps. He advocates for writers, publishers, and readers to seek out communities and conversations that celebrate the traditional art of reading, expressing a desire to promote its profound benefits in a fast-paced and technology-driven world.
In practice
In a book club discussion to promote the joys of reading novels.
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.
Children get smashed for hours on some strictly limited aspect of the Great Big Everything, the Universe, such as water or snow or mud or colors or rocks.
Real knowledge, like every thing else of the highest value, is not to be obtained so easily. It must be worked for, — studied for, — thought for, — and more than all, it must be prayed for.
You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.
Early childhood education is the key to the betterment of society.
There is far too much of the feeding-bottle in education and young people ought to be supplied with good intellectual food and then left to help themselves.
Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.
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