When writing loses touch with the beautiful surface of the world, it loses its way. You always want to be in touch with how things look and what people say and what they call their dogs.
Garrison KeillorRead
When you wage war on the public schools, you're attacking the mortar that holds the community together. You're not a conservative, you're a vandal.
Interpretation
The quote suggests that undermining public schools harms the community's foundation, equating such actions to vandalism.
Garrison Keillor emphasizes the crucial role that public schools play in uniting and strengthening communities. By referring to those who harm or attack public education as vandals, he highlights the destructive impact these actions have on societal cohesion and the future of the community.
In practice
In a speech advocating for educational funding, you might say this quote to emphasize the importance of public schools.
When writing loses touch with the beautiful surface of the world, it loses its way. You always want to be in touch with how things look and what people say and what they call their dogs.
Travel is the art form available to Everyman. You sit in the coffee shop in a strange city and nobody knows who you are, or cares, and so you shed your checkered past and your motley credentials and you face the day unarmed ... And onward we go and some day in the distant future, we will stop and turn around in astonishment to see all the places we've been and the heroes we were.
Thank you, dear God, for this good life and forgive us if we do not love it enough. Thank you for the rain. And for the chance to wake up in three hours and go fishing: I thank you for that now, because I won't feel so thankful then.
I have taken so many wrong turns and been so careless with precious things and managed to lose, or break, or leave out in the rain so much that I loved.
It's a shallow life that doesn't give a person a few scars.
A book is a gift you can open again and again.
As public schools deteriorate, the upper-middle class and wealthy send their kids to private ones. As public pools and playgrounds decay, the better-off buy memberships in private tennis and swimming clubs. As public hospitals decline, the well-off pay premium rates for private care.
The Indians seemed to be living in a place and in a way that was of immense importance to me. So I associate learning to read - English, oddly enough - with wanting to know about Indians. I'm still growing into it. I've never outgrown that.
Many have marked the speed with which Muad'Dib learned the necessities of Arrakis. The Bene Gesserit, of course, know the basis of this speed. For the others, we can say that Muad'Dib learned rapidly because his first training was in how to learn. And the first lesson of all was the basic trust that he could learn. It is shocking to find how many people do not believe they can learn, and how many more believe learning to be difficult. Muad'Dib knew that every experience carries its lesson.
I think that the best way to solve problems and to fight against war is through dialogue. For me the best way to fight against terrorism and extremism... just a simple thing: educate the next generation.
Woe to him who teaches men faster than they can learn.
I knew I would read all kinds of books and try to get at what it is that makes good writers good. But I made no promises that I would write books a lot of people would like to read.
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