Quote

Reading is a means of thinking with another person's mind; it forces you to stretch your own.

Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.

Reading is to the mind what exercising is to the body.

Reading is equivalent to thinking with someone else's head instead of with one's own.

Reading is a technology for perspective-taking. When someone else's thoughts are in your head, you are observing the world from that person's vantage point.

Reading is an act of civilization; it's one of the greatest acts of civilization because it takes the free raw material of the mind and builds castles of possibilities.

Reading is a form of prayer, a guided meditation that briefly makes us believe we're someone else, disrupting the delusion that we're permanent and at the center of the universe. Suddenly (we're saved!) other people are real again, and we're fond of them.

Reading is an active, imaginative act; it takes work.

Reading is becoming a kind of specialist activity, and that strikes terror into the heart of people who love reading.

Reading is a basic tool in the living of a good life.