I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
Interpretation
Reading should be a balanced experience, akin to a nutritious diet, where one selects different styles to enhance understanding.
In this quote, Zadie Smith compares reading to maintaining a balanced diet, suggesting that just as one should be mindful of their nutritional intake, they should also be selective about the type of literature they consume. By contrasting the dense and elaborate style of David Foster Wallace with the more straightforward prose of Franz Kafka, she implies that readers can improve their literary health by diversifying their reading habits and choosing works that provide clarity and nourishment for the mind.
In practice
During the book club meeting, we discussed how to diversify our reading lists for a richer experience.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.
You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.
He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
I can't add. I don't understand basic science. Or anything else. But I can read anything. I've always been able to, and I've always liked to. Even if I didn't understand it, I liked to.
Problems may be solved in the study which have baffled all those who have sought a solution by the aid of their senses. To carry the art, however, to its highest pitch, it is necessary that the reasoner should be able to use all the facts which have come to his knowledge; and this in itself implies, as you will readily see, a possession of all knowledge, which, even in these days of free education and encyclopaedias, is a somewhat rare accomplishment.
Good writing is lean and confident.
From a child I was fond of reading, and all the little money that came into my hands was ever laid out in books. Pleased with the 'Pilgrim's Progress,' my first collection was of John Bunyan's works in separate little volumes.
Let us recommit to supporting every girl to develop her skills, enter the workforce on equal terms, and reach her full potential.
I have a list of titles that I leave at the [library] desk, because they are bound to be written some day, and it's best to be ahead of the queue.
My parents would say to me, 'You can teach yourself anything better than someone else can teach it to you.' That was the whole ethos of my family.
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