Are there other people who, when watching a documentary set in a prison, secretly think, as I have, 'Wish I had all that time to read'?
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the paradox of desiring time for personal growth in dire circumstances.
Zadie Smith's quote explores the irony of wishing for time to read while contemplating the experiences of inmates in a prison setting. It prompts us to consider how our perspectives on time and opportunity can shift depending on our circumstances, suggesting that even in the bleakest situations, the desire for self-improvement and knowledge persists.
In practice
In a discussion about the value of free time, one could use this quote to spark a conversation about how we utilize our time.
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 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.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
Poverty is not a lack of character. Poverty is a lack of cash.
It is a dangerous thing to ask why someone else has been given more. It is humbling - and indeed healthy - to ask why you have been given so much.
I think it's one of the scars in our culture that we have too high an opinion of ourselves. We align ourselves with the angels instead of the higher primates.
If a man's at odds to know his own mind it's because he hasn't got aught but his mind to know it with.
How happy the station which every moment furnishes opportunities of doing good to thousands! How dangerous that which every moment exposes to the injuring of millions!
A good mooring needs no knot, still no one can untie it.
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