Reading and life are not separate but symbiotic. And for this serious task of imaginative discovery and self-discovery, there is and remains one perfect symbol: the printed book.
Interpretation
Reading enriches our lives and helps us understand ourselves better.
In this quote, Julian Barnes highlights the intrinsic connection between reading and life, suggesting that literature plays a vital role in our personal growth and understanding of the world. The printed book serves as a powerful tool for both imaginative exploration and self-reflection, embodying the idea that through reading, we not only gain knowledge but also uncover deeper truths about ourselves and our existence.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of literacy, one could quote this to emphasize reading's role in personal development.
(on grief) And you do come out of it, that’s true. After a year, after five. But you don’t come out of it like a train coming out of a tunnel, bursting through the downs into sunshine and that swift, rattling descent to the Channel; you come out of it as a gull comes out of an oil-slick. You are tarred and feathered for life.
Is despair wrong? Isn’t it the natural condition of life after a certain age? … After a number of events, what is there left but repetition and diminishment? Who wants to go on living? The eccentric, the religious, the artistic (sometimes); those with a false sense of their own worth. Soft cheeses collapse; firm cheeses endurate. Both go mouldy.
It took me some years to clear my head of what Paris wanted me to admire about it, and to notice what I preferred instead. Not power-ridden monuments, but individual buildings which tell a quieter story: the artist's studio, or the Belle Epoque house built by a forgotten financier for a just-remembered courtesan.
But I’ve been turning over in my mind the question of nostalgia, and whether I suffer from it. I certainly don’t get soggy at the memory of some childhood knickknack; nor do I want to deceive myself sentimentally about something that wasn’t even true at the time—love of the old school, and so on. But if nostalgia means the powerful recollection of strong emotions—and a regret that such feelings are no longer present in our lives—then I plead guilty.
And that's a life, isn't it? Some achievements and some disappointments. It's been interesting to me, though I wouldn't complain or be amazed if others found it less so. Maybe, in a way, Adrian knew what he was doing. Not that I would have missed my own life for anything, you understand. [pp.60-61]
Every love story is a potential grief story.
We need to understand that we as citizens and as a government in any community throughout this country have no more important obligation than to educate those who are going to replace us.
Most students who take math classes aren't going to be mathematicians. They're going to be engineers, statisticians - in many ways, that's the more important mission of math education.
Good teachers never say anything. What they do is create the conditions under which learning takes place.
At thirteen, I accompanied my mother to the Hawaiian Islands. There, for the first time, I saw the wonder of a steamship and the vastness of the ocean. From that time on, I was eager to acquire the knowledge of the West and to fathom the mysteries of nature.
There is creative reading as well as creative writing.
It is one of the aims of linguistics to define itself, to recognise what belongs within its domain. In those cases where it relies upon psychology, it will do so indirectly, remaining independent.
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