She was the reason I was a reader, and being a reader was what had made me most myself; it had given me the gifts of curiosity and sympathy, an awareness of the world as an odd and vibrant contradictory place, and it had me unafraid of its oddness and vibrancy and contradictions.
Interpretation
Reading opens up a world of understanding and self-awareness.
This quote emphasizes the profound impact that reading can have on an individual’s sense of self and perspective on the world. The speaker credits someone significant for fostering their love of reading, which in turn has enriched their understanding of life’s complexities and cultivated essential traits such as curiosity and empathy. It suggests that through literature, one becomes more attuned to the vibrancy and contradictions of existence, leading to a more fearless engagement with the world.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of education, I would quote this to highlight the role of reading.
The big occurrences in life, the serious ones, have for me always been nearly impossible to recognize because they never feel big or serious. In the moment, you have to pee, your arm itches, or what people are saying strikes you as melodramatic or sentimental, and it's hard not to smirk. You have a sense of what this type of situation should be like - for one thing, all-consuming - and this isn't it. But then you look back, and it was that; it did happen.
Sometimes, there can be a slightly condescending assumption that anything unlikable about a female character is a mistake, as if they're a contestant in a beauty pageant and have to seem charming and upbeat all the time.
Is the depressing part that he's only half right - it's not that she doesn't need rescuing but that nobody else will be able to do it? She has always somehow known that she is the one who will have to rescue herself. Or maybe what's depressing is that this knowledge seems like it should make life easier, and instead it makes it harder.
Who will take responsibility for raising the next generation?
When you're a student of poetry, you're lucky if you don't realize how untalented you are until you get a little better. Otherwise, you would just stop.
No one is going to give you the education you need to overthrow them.
At Cornell University, my professor of European literature, Vladimir Nabokov, changed the way I read and the way I write. Words could paint pictures, I learned from him. Choosing the right word, and the right word order, he illustrated, could make an enormous difference in conveying an image or an idea.
You need, as a historian, essential triangulation from your subject and the only way you get that triangulation is through time.
Middle-class families know education begins at birth.
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