What I meant in 1992

I got an email today from someone who says I was his English 100 instructor in 1992 and that I wrote the following comment to him: "One day when you're 40, you will have learned to appreciate reading more and sit down and write the great american novel." He wants to know what I meant, feels trapped in the world of making money and interacting with customers. He's 44 and wants to do something new that honors his introspective self, the one exhausted by constant contact with others. I remember neither the comment nor his name, but am gobsmacked that those words stayed with him for that long, that they speak to him during a mid-life crisis, that he wants to know if I meant them. I can only assume that I did. That sentence of mine is as mysterious to me now as it has been to him.