A good day is one where I can not just read a book, but write a review of it. Maybe today I'll be able to do that. I get for some reason somewhat stronger when the sun starts to go down. Dusk is a good time for me. I'm crepuscular.
Interpretation
A fulfilling day includes not only reading but also reflecting on and sharing thoughts about what was read.
In this quote, Christopher Hitchens expresses the joy and fulfillment he derives from both engaging with literature and articulating his thoughts about it. He highlights a personal preference for the time of day when he feels most inspired, suggesting that creativity and reflection can be enhanced by certain environments and times, like dusk, which he associates with his own heightened state of mind. This dual appreciation for reading and writing emphasizes the importance of introspection and communication in one's intellectual pursuits.
In practice
In a book club discussion to emphasize the joy of both reading and writing about experiences with literature.
In a public dialogue with Salman in London he [Edward Said] had once described the Palestinian plight as one where his people, expelled and dispossessed by Jewish victors, were in the unique historical position of being 'the victims of the victims': there was something quasi-Christian, I thought, in the apparent humility of that statement.
What can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Never ask while you are doing it if what you are doing is fun. Don't introduce even your most reliably witty acquaintance as someone who will set the table on a roar.
[E]xceptional claims demand exceptional evidence.
The worst days are when you feel foggy in the head - chemo-brain they call it. It's awful because you feel boring. As well as bored. And stupid. And resigned.
Let me tell you something: for hundreds of thousands of years, this kind of discussion would have been impossible to have, or those like us would have been having it at the risk of our lives. Religion now comes to us in this smiley-face, ingratiating way — because it’s had to give so much more ground and because we know so much more. But you’ve got no right to forget the way it behaved when it was strong, and when it really did believe that it had God on its side.
Your teacher might be a child who takes you by the hand and asks you a question that you hadn't considered before, and your answer to the child is your answer to yourself.
We seek a constitutional amendment to permit voluntary school prayer. God should never have been expelled from America's classrooms in the first place.
In a television interview, I said that diversity in our children's books should include the adventures of disabled children, travellers and gipsies, LGBT teens, different cultures, classes, colours, religions. It shouldn't be a token gesture, nor do such stories need to be 'issue-based'.
It is so important that British children are taught about the World Wars that their great grandparents fought in and lived through. It was a terrifying time.
The paper is patient, but the reader is not.
Public libraries are the sole community centers left in America. The degree to which a branch of the local library is connected to the larger culture is a reflection of the degree to which the community itself is connected to the larger culture.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.