The experienced writer says to the anguished novice: 'Just do it; get something, anything, on to the screen or page, just establish a flow of words, and criticise them later.' You give this advice but can't always take it.
Hilary MantelRead
You can control and censor a child's reading, but you can't control her interpretations; no one can guess how a message that to adults seems banal or ridiculous or outmoded will alter itself and evolve inside the darkness of a child's heart.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Adults may control what children read, but they cannot control how children interpret that reading.
This quote emphasizes the idea that while adults might have authority over the reading material children are exposed to, they cannot dictate how children's minds will interpret and internalize those messages. The interpretations of children are unique and deeply personal, often evolving in ways that may surprise adults, highlighting the complexity of childhood understanding and the individuality of thought.
Themes
ChildrenReadingInterpretationEducationUnderstanding
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about censorship in schools, this quote can highlight the importance of a child's personal interpretation.
More from Hilary Mantel
All quotes →History is always changing behind us, and the past changes a little every time we retell it.
Hilary MantelRead
Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.
Hilary MantelRead
He is careful to deny responsibility for September, but he does not, you notice, condemn the killings. He also refrains from killing words, sparing Roland and Buzot, as if they were beneath his notice. August 10 was illegal, he says; so too was the taking of the Bastille. What account can we take of that, in revolution? It is the nature of revolutions to break laws. We are not justices of the peace; we are legislators to a new world.
Hilary MantelRead
It is the absence of facts that frightens people: the gap you open, into which they pour their fears, fantasies, desires.
Hilary MantelRead
History offers us vicarious experience. It allows the youngest student to possess the ground equally with his elders; without a knowledge of history to give him a context for present events, he is at the mercy of every social misdiagnosis handed to him.
Hilary MantelRead
Similar quotes
I like to build places online where readers can have productive conversations about books.
John GreenRead
High school teachers who want to get reluctant readers turned around need to give the students some say in the reading list. Make it collaborative: The students will feel ownership, and everyone will dig in.
Dave EggersRead
Become a teacher. Your country needs you.
Barack ObamaRead
Cultivate the habit of attention and try to gain opportunities to hear wise men and women talk. Indifference and inattention are the two most dangerous monsters that you ever meet. Interest and attention will insure to you an education.
Robert Andrews MillikanRead
A book is an attempt to make through permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. […] The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation. (70)
Neil PostmanRead
The great doctors all got their education off dirt pavements and poverty - not marble floors and foundations.
Martin H. FischerRead