“What I sought in books was imagination, it was depth, depth of thought and feeling; some sort of extreme of subject matter; some nearness to death; some call to courage.  I myself was getting wild; I wanted wildness, originality, genius, rapture, hope.  I wanted strength, not tea parties.  What I sought in books was a world whose surfaces, whose people and events and days lived actually matched the exaltation of the interior life.  There you could live.  Those of us who read carried around with us like martyrs a secret knowledge, a secret joy, and a secret hope:  There is a life worth living where history is still taking place; there are ideas worth dying for, and circumstances where courage is still prized.”

–Annie Dillard, An American Childhood