For thousands and thousands of American kids, libraries are the only safe place they can find to study, a haven free from the dangers of street or the numbing temptations of television. As schools cut back services, the library looms even more important to countless children.
Interpretation
Libraries provide a safe space for children to learn and grow, especially when other resources are limited.
This quote emphasizes the crucial role that libraries play in the lives of many children, particularly in communities where schools may be underfunded or where there are distractions and dangers in the outside world. Libraries serve as a sanctuary for learning, creativity, and exploration, offering access to knowledge and a safe environment for those who seek it.
In practice
In a speech about community resources, one might say, 'As Scott Turow noted, libraries are often the only safe space for our children to learn.'
The issue is not whether there are horrible cases where the penalty seems "right". The real question is whether we will ever design a capital system that reaches only the "right" cases, without dragging in the wrong cases, cases of innocence or cases where death is not proportionate punishment. Slowly, even reluctantly, I have realized the answer to that question is no- we will never get it right.
Only in the mystery novel are we delivered final and unquestionable solutions. The joke to me is that fiction gives you a truth that reality can't deliver.
I was one of those kids who never wanted to be anything but a novelist. And I don't know a lot of people who truly live the life that they dreamed of.
What kills a person at twenty-five? Leukemia. An accident. But George knows the better odds are that someone who passes at that age dies of unhappiness. Drug overdose. Suicide. Reckless behavior.
I certainly wasn't seeking any degree, the way a college confers a status symbol upon its students. My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me, asking questions. One was, "What's your alma mater?" I told him, "Books.
Life must be kept up at a great rate in order to absorb any considerable amount of learning.
Only that education deserves emphatically to be termed cultivation of the mind which teaches young people how to begin to think.
Teaching at best beckons us to morality, but it is not in itself efficacious. Teaching is like a mirror. It can show you if your face is dirty, but it the mirror will not wash your face.
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
A primary object should be the education of our youth in the science of government. In a republic, what species of knowledge can be equally important? And what duty more pressing than communicating it to those who are to be the future guardians of the liberties of the country?
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