I love the solitude of reading. I love the deep dive into someone else's story, the delicious ache of a last page.
Interpretation
Reading provides a unique escape and connection to others' experiences and emotions.
In this quote, Naomi Shihab Nye expresses her appreciation for reading as a reflective and solitary activity. The solitude allows for an introspective journey into the lives and stories of others, creating a profound emotional connection that lingers, particularly emphasized by the bittersweet feeling that accompanies finishing a good book.
In practice
During a book club meeting, to emphasize the joy of reading.
It is really hard to be lonely very long in a world of words. Even if you don't have friends somewhere, you still have language, and it will find you and wrap its little syllables around you and suddenly there will be a story to live in.
I am looking for the human who admits his flaws Who shocks the adversary By being kinder not stronger What would that be like? We don't even know
A boy told me if he roller-skated fast enough his loneliness couldn't catch up to him, the best reason I ever heard for trying to be a champion. What I wonder tonight pedaling hard down King William Street is if it translates to bicycles. A victory! To leave your loneliness panting behind you on some street corner while you float free into a cloud of sudden azaleas, pink petals that have never felt loneliness, no matter how slowly they fell.
I think whenever you love something or somebody it means that you have to extend yourself, you have to grow - get a little larger. You can't stay in your little comfortable - spot.
As a direct line to human feeling, empathic experience, genuine language and detail, poetry is everything that headline news is not. It takes us inside situations, helps us imagine life from more than one perspective, honors imagery and metaphor - those great tools of thought - and deepens our confidence in a meaningful world.
I support all people on earth who have bodies like and unlike my body.
Kids are never the problem. They are born scientists. The problem is always the adults. They beat the curiosity out of kids. They outnumber kids. They vote. They wield resources. That's why my public focus is primarily adults.
Let us in education dream of an aristocracy of achievement arising out of a democracy of opportunity
Boys do not evaluate a book. They divide books into categories. There are sexy books, war books, westerns, travel books, science fiction. A boy will accept anything from a section he knows rather than risk another sort. He has to have the label on the bottle to know it is the mixture as before.
Every day seems to bring news about another for-profit college scam. Hundreds of thousands of students have been deceived, misled, and harassed into enrolling at these schools where they end up with a mountain of debt and a worthless degree.
History education in schools is so poor that students often enter college ignorant of the past - and leave just as unenlightened.
Books are not about passing time. They're about other lives. Other worlds. Far from wanting time to pass, one just wishes one had more of it. If one wanted to pass the time one could go to New Zealand.
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