I suppose books mean more than people to me anyway
Interpretation
The speaker values books and the knowledge they offer more than human relationships.
This quote reflects the idea that for some individuals, the insights, experiences, and emotions conveyed through books can hold more significance and depth than their interactions with other people. It underscores a deep appreciation for literature and the wisdom that can be found within written words, suggesting that books can form an essential part of one's identity and understanding of the world.
In practice
During a book club discussion where members reflect on their love for literature over social interactions.
Don't be so anxious about it,' she laughed. 'I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do; I never got the trick of it.' She looked down at him, shy and fatigued. 'So here we are. I told you years ago that I had the makings of Cinderella.' He took her hand; she drew it back instinctively and then replaced it in his. 'Beg your pardon. Not even used to being touched. But I'm not afraid of you, if you stay quiet and don't move suddenly.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
It was about then [1920] that I wrote a line which certain people will not let me forget: "She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven."
The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
But you can love more than just one person, can't you?
A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths.
It is not the voice that commands the story: it is the ear.
I'll read anything Anne Carson writes, anything J. M. Coetzee writes, and anything Cormac McCarthy writes. I'll drop whatever I'm doing to read a new Mary Ruefle essay.
Last Exit to Brooklyn should explode like a rusty hellish bombshell over America and still be eagerly read in a hundred years.
In a memoir, your main contract with the reader is to tell the truth, no matter how bizarre.
Death of the Father would deprive literature of many of its pleasures. If there is no longer a Father, why tell stories? Doesn't every narrative lead back to Oedipus? Isn't storytelling always a way of searching for one's origin, speaking one's conflicts with the Law, entering into the dialectic of tenderness and hatred?
My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me, βAll Southern literature can be summed up in these words: βOn the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to Sister.ββ She raised me up to be a Southern writer, but it wasnβt easy.
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