Recently, President Obama spoke to the New York Times about literature and what it means to him. We found the transcript pretty inspiring! A few of our favorite quotes are listed below:
"And so the idea of having these worlds that were portable, that were yours, that you could enter into, was appealing to me."
"But it reintroduced me to the power of words as a way to figure out who you are and what you think, and what you believe, and what’s important, and to sort through and interpret this swirl of events that is happening around you every minute."
"For me, particularly at that time, writing was the way I sorted through a lot of crosscurrents in my life — race, class, family. And I genuinely believe that it was part of the way in which I was able to integrate all these pieces of myself into something relatively whole."
"Fiction was useful as a reminder of the truths under the surface of what we argue about every day and was a way of seeing and hearing the voices, the multitudes of this country."
"I would say Shakespeare continues to be a touchstone. Like most teenagers in high school, when we were assigned, I don’t know, “The Tempest” or something, I thought, ‘My God, this is boring.’ And I took this wonderful Shakespeare class in college where I just started to read the tragedies and dig into them. And that, I think, is foundational for me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play themselves out between human beings."
"There’s something particular about quieting yourself and having a sustained stretch of time that is different from music or television or even the greatest movies."
"What holds us together is an idea, and it’s a story about who we are and what’s important to us. And I want to make sure that we continue that."
Check out the article by clicking here. For the full transcript, click on this link.
"And so the idea of having these worlds that were portable, that were yours, that you could enter into, was appealing to me."
"But it reintroduced me to the power of words as a way to figure out who you are and what you think, and what you believe, and what’s important, and to sort through and interpret this swirl of events that is happening around you every minute."
"For me, particularly at that time, writing was the way I sorted through a lot of crosscurrents in my life — race, class, family. And I genuinely believe that it was part of the way in which I was able to integrate all these pieces of myself into something relatively whole."
"Fiction was useful as a reminder of the truths under the surface of what we argue about every day and was a way of seeing and hearing the voices, the multitudes of this country."
"I would say Shakespeare continues to be a touchstone. Like most teenagers in high school, when we were assigned, I don’t know, “The Tempest” or something, I thought, ‘My God, this is boring.’ And I took this wonderful Shakespeare class in college where I just started to read the tragedies and dig into them. And that, I think, is foundational for me in understanding how certain patterns repeat themselves and play themselves out between human beings."
"There’s something particular about quieting yourself and having a sustained stretch of time that is different from music or television or even the greatest movies."
"What holds us together is an idea, and it’s a story about who we are and what’s important to us. And I want to make sure that we continue that."
Check out the article by clicking here. For the full transcript, click on this link.
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