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.
Maybe reading was just a way to make her feel less alone, to keep her company. When you read something you are stopped, the moment is stayed, you can sometimes be there more fully than you can in your real life.
I was going to show my kids that no matter what happened with their parents, parole officers and other teachers, I wouldn't give up on them. I let them know it matters to me that you come to class, it matters to me that you try, it matters to me when you succeed.
We cannot protect our children from life. Therefore, it is essential to prepare them for it. Feeling sorry for children is one of the most seriously damaging attitudes we can have. It so greatly demonstrates to them and to ourselves that we lack faith in them and their ability to cope with adversities.
There's no such thing as knowledge management;_x000D_ _x000D_ there are only knowledgeable people._x000D_ _x000D_ Information only becomes knowledge_x000D_ _x000D_ in the hands of someone_x000D_ _x000D_ who knows what to do with it.
A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.
We teach children to save their money. As an attempt to counteract thoughtless and selfish expenditure, that has value. But it is not positive; it does not lead the child into the safe and useful avenues of self-expression or self-expenditure. To teach a child to invest and use is better than to teach him to save.
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