You know, you don't expect everyone to be as educated as everyone else or have the same achievements, but you expect at least to be offered at least some of the opportunities, and libraries are the most simple and the most open way to give people access to books.
Interpretation
Access to education should be equitable, and libraries play a key role in providing opportunities for all.
In this quote, Zadie Smith discusses the importance of education and equality of opportunity. She emphasizes that although individuals may have different levels of education and achievements, the provision of access to resources, such as books in libraries, is essential to ensure that everyone has the chance to learn and grow, thereby leveling the playing field in society.
In practice
In a speech about community development, you might reference this quote to highlight the importance of libraries.
Because immigrants have always been particularly prone to repetition - it's something to do with that experience of moving from West to East or East to West or from island to island. Even when you arrive, you're still going back and forth; your children are going round and round. There's no proper term for it - original sin seems too harsh; maybe original trauma would be better.
He did not consider if or how or why he loved them. They were just love: they were the first evidence he ever had of love, and they would be the last confirmation of love when everything else fell away.
We cannot be all the writers all the time. We can only be who we are. Which leads me to my second point: writers do not write what they want, they write what they can.
I think of reading like a balanced diet; if your sentences are too baggy, too baroque, cut back on fatty Foster Wallace, say, and pick up Kafka as roughage.
I never attended a creative writing class in my life. I have a horror of them.
I can't add. I don't understand basic science. Or anything else. But I can read anything. I've always been able to, and I've always liked to. Even if I didn't understand it, I liked to.
What separates developing countries from developed countries is as much a gap in knowledge as a gap in resources.
A child is not a vase to be filled, but a fire to be lit.
Each child should be more intelligent than his parents.
When I say to a parent, "read to a child", I don't want it to sound like medicine. I want it to sound like chocolate.
Let us teach our people again to be proud that they are Filipinos. Let us teach them to realize anew that being a Filipino means having as rich and noble a heritage of language, culture, patriotism and heroic deeds as any nation on earth. Let us teach a steadfast faith in Divine Providence, a stable family institution, the unhampered enjoyment of civil liberties, the advantages of constitutional government, the potentials of a rich and spacious land.
What's done to children, they will do to society.
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