Growing up, books were my lifeline, and I owe a debt to those writers that can never be repaid. They saved my sanity and gave me a world I could escape to. If I can pay that forward to another person, that's all I ask.
Interpretation
Books can provide comfort and escape, influencing our lives profoundly.
In this quote, Sherrilyn Kenyon expresses gratitude towards the writers whose books played a crucial role in her life during her formative years. She highlights how literature served as a refuge, preserving her mental wellbeing and offering an alternate reality, and reflects on the importance of passing on that gift to others, emphasizing a cycle of sharing knowledge and comfort through reading.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of reading in schools, this quote could be shared to illustrate how books can impact individuals.
Anyone can battle for pride, power, vanity, greed, or hate, but war should always be approached with an equal measure of wisdom and strength. It's not just enough to know when to fight, but to know when to lay down the sword and negotiate. Not everything in the world is worth fighting for.
Every person you meet is waging his or her own war against a callous universe that is plotting against them.
If you love something, set it free. If it comes back, it was, and always will be yours. If it never returns, it was never yours to begin with.
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.
Some students start thinking of their intelligence as something fixed, as carved in stone. They worry about, 'Do I have enough? Don't I have enough?'
Why are you so docile when you give up your child to a government agent called a schoolteacher?
When I was growing up, books took me away from my life to a solitary place that didn't feel lonely. They celebrated the outcasts, people who sat on the margins of society contemplating their interiors. . . Books were my cure for a romanticized unhappiness, for the anxiety of impending adulthood. They were all mine, private islands with secret passwords only the worthy could utter.
So, this is my government's agenda: educate your daughter and save your daughter.
Our present educational systems are all paramilitary. Their aim is to produce servants or soldiers who obey without question and who accepts their training as the best possible training. Those who are most successful in the state are those who have the most interest in prolonging the state as it is; they are also those who have the most say in the educational system, and in particular by ensuring that the educational product they want is the most highly rewarded.
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