"One of the greatest gifts my brother and I received from my mother was her love of literature and language. With their boundless energy, libraries open the door to these worlds and so many others. I urge young and old alike to embrace all that libraries have to offer"
About this Quote
The phrasing does a lot of soft work. Calling a love of literature and language a "gift" frames reading as something passed down, not assigned. It sidesteps the moralizing tone that can make arts advocacy sound like homework. Then she pivots to libraries as the mechanism that democratizes that gift: "open the door to these worlds" is a deliberately gentle metaphor, suggesting invitation rather than gatekeeping. "Boundless energy" is a curious, almost anthropomorphic move - libraries as lively agents, not quiet warehouses - which counters the stale stereotype of dusty stacks and shushing.
The subtext is cultural triage. In an era of shrinking municipal budgets, book bans, and the algorithmic siphoning of attention, libraries are one of the few public spaces that still offer privacy, free access, and low-stakes self-reinvention. Kennedy's "young and old alike" is both inclusive and strategic: it reframes libraries as intergenerational infrastructure, not a children's amenity or a niche refuge for literary types. As a public-facing Kennedy, she uses celebrity in its most functional form here: to make a widely shared institution feel personally owned, and therefore worth defending.
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Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Kennedy, Caroline. (2026, January 15). One of the greatest gifts my brother and I received from my mother was her love of literature and language. With their boundless energy, libraries open the door to these worlds and so many others. I urge young and old alike to embrace all that libraries have to offer. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-of-the-greatest-gifts-my-brother-and-i-115363/
Chicago Style
Kennedy, Caroline. "One of the greatest gifts my brother and I received from my mother was her love of literature and language. With their boundless energy, libraries open the door to these worlds and so many others. I urge young and old alike to embrace all that libraries have to offer." FixQuotes. January 15, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-of-the-greatest-gifts-my-brother-and-i-115363/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"One of the greatest gifts my brother and I received from my mother was her love of literature and language. With their boundless energy, libraries open the door to these worlds and so many others. I urge young and old alike to embrace all that libraries have to offer." FixQuotes, 15 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/one-of-the-greatest-gifts-my-brother-and-i-115363/. Accessed 7 Feb. 2026.




