“A room without books is like a body without a soul.”
β Marcus Tullius Cicero
In a class on abnormal psychology, the instructor was about to introduce the subject of manic depression.
She posed this question to her students: “How would you diagnose a patient who walks back and forth screaming at the top of his lungs one minute, then sits down weeping uncontrollably the next?”
A young man in the rear raised his hand and suggested earnestly, “A football coach?”
βReading is everything. Reading makes me feel like Iβve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; itβs a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and itβs a way of making contact with someone elseβs imagination after a day thatβs all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.β
– Nora Ephron