All I hope, selfishly, is that there will be real books until the day I draw my last breath.
Interpretation
The quote expresses a deep desire for the continued existence of real books throughout one's life.
In this quote, Jane Hamilton conveys her passionate hope that physical books will persist in the world until her death. This reflects not only her love for literature but also the belief in the irreplaceable value of real books as sources of knowledge, connection, and imagination in an increasingly digital age. It reveals an emotional attachment to the tactile experience of reading and suggests that books serve as enduring companions in life's journey.
In practice
In a book club discussion about the impact of digital media on reading habits.
From early on I valued the gift of memory above all others. I understood that as we grow older we carry a whole nation around inside of us, places and ways that have disappeared, believing that they are ours, that we alone hold the torch for our past, that we are as impenetrable as stone.
I had forgotten what it was like, to be drawn to a person...I'd forgotten how your blood flows toward a person when they move, so that all at once you know what the pull of gravity feels like. and you know that this is something strong and important, something that you need for life, this woman moving through the room.
...you have to learn where your pain is. You have to burrow down and find the wound, and if the burden of it is too terrible to shoulder, you have to shout it out; you have to shout for help... And then finally, the way through grief is grieving.
No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.
All provisions of federal, state or local law requiring or permitting discrimination in public education must yield.
Knowledge without follow-through is worse than no knowledge.
If every parent understood the huge educational benefits and intense happiness brought about by reading aloud to their children, and if every parent- and every adult caring for a child-read aloud a minimum of three stories a day to the children in our lives, we could probably wipe out illiteracy within one generation.
As writers become more numerous, it is natural for readers to become more indolent; whence must necessarily arise a desire of attaining knowledge with the greatest possible ease.
Therefore, teaching, talk and tale, however lucid or fascinating, effect nothing until self-activity be set up; that is, self-education is the only possible education; the rest is mere veneer laid on the surface of a child's nature.
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