The world of literature has everything in it, and it refuses to leave anything out. I have read like a man on fire my whole life because the genius of English teachers touched me with the dazzling beauty of language.
Because of them I rode with Don Quixote and danced with Anna Karenina at a ball in St. Petersburg and lassoed a steer in "Lonesome Dove" and had nightmares about slavery in "Beloved" and walked the streets of Dublin in "Ulysses" and made up a hundred stories in the Arabian nights and say my mother was killed by a baseball in "A Prayer for Owen Meany." I've been in ten thousand cities and have introduced myself to a hundred thousand strangers in my exuberant reading career, all because I listened to my fabulous English teachers and soaked up every single thing those magnificent men and women had to give. I cherish and praise them and thank them for finding me when I was a boy and presenting me with the precious gift of the English language.
~Pat Conroy
2 comments:
Very nice. There are a lot of English teachers around who would love to have this sent to them, I think. :)
Yes, you're probably right. I was kind of a reluctant reader as a child but it was my English teachers who pushed me to read things like To Kill A Mockingbird and Huckleberry Finn in middle school that made me a committed reader. My dad's extensive library and voracious reading habits at home sealed the deal.
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