The writers we absorb when we're young bind us to them, sometimes lightly, sometimes with iron. In time, the bonds fall away, but if you look very closely you can sometimes make out the pale white groove of a faded scar, or the telltale chalky red of old rust.
Interpretation
The writers we encounter in our youth create lasting impacts on us, which may fade but leave a mark.
This quote reflects on the profound influence that literature and authors have on us during our formative years. It illustrates how the stories, ideas, and styles of writing we engage with can create deep connections that shape our identity, perspectives, and emotional landscapes. While these influences may eventually weaken or change over time, they leave an indelible impression that can be identified even years later, akin to a scar or rust that signifies past experiences.
In practice
In a book discussion, to emphasize the lasting impact of childhood reading on personal growth.
Closeness can lead to emotions other than love. It's the ones who have been too intimate with you, lived in too close quarters, seen too much of your pain or envy or, perhaps more than anything, your shame, who, at the crucial moment, can be too easy to cut out, to exile, to expel, to kill off.
By 2018, an estimated 63 percent of all new U.S. jobs will require workers with an education beyond high school. For our young people to get those jobs, they first need to graduate from high school ready to start a postsecondary education.
I was raised in Harlem. I never found a book that took place in Harlem. I never had a church like mine in a book. I never had people like the people I knew. People who could not find their lives in books and celebrated felt bad about themselves. I needed to write to include the lives of these young people.
Human intelligence is richer and more dynamic than we have been led to believe by formal academic education.
I can create as many programs and mentorships and scholarships as I want, but it doesn't change the environment in which our youth are growing up in.
When I was 10 years old, I loved - I loved books, and I used to haunt the secondhand bookshop. And I found a little book I could just afford, and I bought it, and I took it home. And I climbed up my favorite tree, and I read that book from cover to cover. And that was Tarzan of the Apes. I immediately fell in love with Tarzan.
I see journalists as the manual workers, the laborers of the word. Journalism can only be literature when it is passionate.
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