“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies. The man who never reads lives only one.” -George R.R. Martin
“Books are like imprisoned souls till someone takes them down from a shelf and frees them.”-Samuel Butler
The world of fiction has taken me places I may never see. Shown me things about myself I have never known. Offered up a world of possibility and perspective on love, life, death and emotion that maybe I would never have access to otherwise. It has saved my sanity. Enhanced my being. Offered comfort from a crushing loneliness that I have always felt prowling the dark places in my mind. Reading has been one of the only constant things in an ever shifting life I call my own. Without books I don't know where I would be.
“Maybe this is why we read, and why in moments of darkness we return to books: to find words for what we already know.” -Alberto Manguel
Sometimes I think I need rehab. It's not normal to be so engrossed in something that isn't real at all. To place such heavy importance on ideas plucked from thin air and thrown onto a sheet of paper seems crazy to me at times. But I guess there could be worse things than having a love affair with a novel. It's important to have things that make you feel. Reading makes me feel. It forces me to confront myself. My fears. My hesitations. My failures. Me. I never feel more myself than when I am reading a book. And I guess maybe this love affair is a good thing.
“And she is the reader
who browses the shelf
and looks for new worlds
but finds herself.”
who browses the shelf
and looks for new worlds
but finds herself.”
-Laura Purdie Salas
