I was a voracious reader and the library fed my curiosity, imagination and my soul. I read by the shelf - biographies, fantasy - all and everything fed my dreams. Then as an adult whenever I would go on location the first thing we would do as a family is sign up at the closest library. Not only would we find books, but what was happening in that town, because the library is the head of the community.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of reading and libraries in nurturing curiosity and community engagement.
In this quote, Susan Sarandon reflects on her lifelong love of reading and the profound impact that libraries have had on her life and imagination. She highlights how libraries serve not only as places to discover books, but also as integral parts of the community that foster connections and knowledge. By portraying reading as a source of nourishment for the soul and a gateway to understanding the world, Sarandon encourages a love of literature and an acknowledgment of libraries as valuable community resources.
In practice
During a speech at a local library fundraiser to emphasize the role of libraries in education.
At a time when everything seems so out of control and the people you've elected are bogus and there's so much random violence and hatred, it fills you with such hope and admiration to even be part for a short time in a community where people have connected to strangers to try to put out a hand.
Suffering should not define you as a woman! And just because you’re a man it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t affect you! HELP HER to remove the taboos and the loneliness surrounding this disease; be understanding, show empathy, and don’t accuse her of being sensitive, delicate, or overly dramatic – this is a big opportunity for you guys to show that you care and to be a real man!
Knowledge is the key to stopping the spread of AIDS. Yet millions of children are missing an education. Missing their teachers who have died of the disease. Missing from class as they stay home to care for their dying mothers and fathers. Children are missing your support. United for Children. Unite against AIDS.
If you walk down the street and see someone in a box, you have a choice. That person is either the other and you're fearful of them, or that person is an extension of your family.
We need a witness to our lives. There's a billion people on the planet... I mean, what does any one life really mean? But in a marriage, you're promising to care about everything. The good things, the bad things, the terrible things, the mundane things... all of it, all of the time, every day. You're saying 'Your life will not go unnoticed because I will notice it. Your life will not go un-witnessed because I will be your witness'.
Do you really expect me to say gravity hasn't taken its toll? No. But as I'm earning these lines [in my face], I'm making an aesthetic choice.
My purpose... to go on with my heart and soul, devoting all my energies to Girl Scouts, and heart and hand with them, we will make our lives and the lives of the future girls happy, healthy and holy.
My education was the liberty I had to read indiscriminately and all the time, with my eyes hanging out.
Education is that whole system of human training within and without the school house walls, which molds and develops men.
It hardly matters why a library is destroyed: every banning, curtailment, shredding, plunder or loot gives rise (at least as a ghostly presence) to a louder, clearer, more durable library of the banned, looted, plundered, shredded or curtailed.
Kids all want to look cool, as if knowledge is a great burden, but they're always looking around. They remember.
I went away in my head, into a book. That was where I went whenever real life was too hard or too inflexible.
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