President Obama: “ . . . the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels.”
For almost 70 years we’ve espoused the importance and power of reading novels, and it’s affirming to hear President Obama express the same conviction. In an interview with Marilynne Robinson published in the New York Review of Books, president Obama discusses the tremendous impact reading novels has had on his life: “When I think about how I understand my role as citizen, setting aside being president, and the most important set of understandings that I bring to that position of citizen, the most important stuff I’ve learned I think I’ve learned from novels. It has to do with empathy. It has to do with being comfortable with the notion that the world is complicated and full of grays, but there’s still truth there to be found, and that you have to strive for that and work for that. And the notion that it’s possible to connect with some[one] else even though they’re very different from you.”
