When I began going to school and learned to read, I encountered stories of other people and other lands.
Interpretation
Reading opens up new perspectives and experiences beyond one's own.
This quote by Chinua Achebe highlights the transformative power of reading and education. It suggests that attending school and learning to read allowed him to explore diverse narratives and cultures, broadening his understanding of the world and the people in it.
In practice
In a motivational speech about the importance of education.
In fact, I thought that Christianity was very a good and a very valuable thing for us. But after a while, I began to feel that the story that I was told about this religion wasn't perhaps completely whole, that something was left out.
Writers don't give prescriptions. They give headaches!
Mr. Brown had thought of nothing but numbers. He should have known that the kingdom of God did not depend on large crowds. Our Lord Himself stressed the importance of fewness. Narrow is the way and few the number. To fill the Lord's holy temple with an idolatrous crowd clamoring for signs was a folly of everlasting consequence. Our Lord used the whip only once in His life - to drive the crowd away from His church.
It is the storyteller who makes us what we are, who creates history. The storyteller creates the memory that the survivors must have - otherwise their surviving would have no meaning.
Writing has always been a serious business for me. I felt it was a moral obligation. A major concern of the time was the absence of the African voice. Being part of that dialogue meant not only sitting at the table but effectively telling the African story from an African perspective - in full earshot of the world.
An angry man is always a stupid man.
For the speedy reader paragraphs become a country the eye flies over looking for landmarks, reference points, airports, restrooms, passages of sex.
In many countries, they do not even keep track of how girls are doing in school, or if they are there at all. If we say, 'Girls count,' then we must count girls, so we can see if we are really making progress in educating every girl.
You can't have a sustainable US economy without a great education system. Teach students to do the job right. You don't have an innovative economy unless you have a great education.
Since belief determines behavior, doesn't it make sense that we should be teaching ethical, moral values in every home and in every school in America?
Writing nonfiction has been my most serious education, and for all those years it kept me from even glancing in the direction of despair.
I see it as my job to try to make history to be a popular thing. The longer I keep going the less weird it will be to be a female historian.
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