Reading was like a drug, a dope. The novels created moods in which I lived for days.
Richard WrightRead
It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the power of literature and experiences to change our perception of the world.
Richard Wright suggests that the impact of reading transcends mere belief; it influences our emotions and alters our perspective. Engaging with literature can evoke feelings that lead to a profound transformation in how we perceive reality, highlighting the emotional resonance of written words.
Themes
LiteraturePerceptionEmotionChangeExperience
In practice
Example use cases
In a book club meeting discussing the impact of literature on our worldview.
More from Richard Wright
All quotes βIt had been only through books-at best, no more than vicarious cultural transfusions-that I had managaed to keep myself alive in a negatively vital way. Whenever my environment had failed to support or nourish me, I had clutched at books.
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I was not leaving the south to forget the south, but so that some day I might understand it
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Hunger has always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at my gauntly.
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He had lived and acted on the assumption that he was alone, and now he saw that he had not been. What he had done made others suffer. No matter how much he would long for them to forget him, they would not be able to. His family was a part of him, not only in blood, but in spirit.
Richard WrightRead
It made me love talk that sought answers to questions that could help nobody, that could only keep alive in me that enthralling sense of wonder and awe in the face of the drama of human feeling which is hidden by the external drama of life.
Richard WrightRead
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