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.
I went to the trash pile at Tuskegee Institute and started my laboratory with bottles, old fruit jars and any other thing I found I could use. ... [The early efforts were] worked out almost wholly on top of my flat topped writing desk and with teacups, glasses, bottles and reagents I made myself.
In the real world, the smartest people are people who make mistakes and learn. In school, the smartest people don't make mistakes.
The rate of progress is so rapid that what one learns at school or university is always a bit out of date. Only a few people can keep up with the rapidly advancing frontier of knowledge, and they have to devote their whole time to it and specialize in a small area. The rest of the population has little idea of the advances that are being made or the excitement they are generating.
The world is a university and everyone in it is a teacher. Make sure when you wake up in the morning you go to school.
Read widely, and without apology. Read what you want to read, not what someone tells you you should read.
Children are coming to school with trauma, everyday trauma, that they live under: violence in the homes, alcoholism in the community, unemployment thats 80 percent, not just during the recession. We need to help treat that before they can even go sit in a class and learn about math.
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