“A book is a machine to think with”
– I. A. Richards, quoted in Writing as Thinking by Keith Oatley and Maja Djikic
__________
“Thinking, as opposed to making rather superficial distinctions and decisions is, apparently, unnecessary for everyday life. Most people simply go along with their lives, accepting what happens to them, attributing to good and back luck whatever fortune or plight comes their way.”
– Charles Willeford, I Was Looking For a Street
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Book are a defence against cruise control: days can blend into weeks; weeks into months; the journey is a blur.
Reading helps me step out of the everyday into a world of frozen time.
I can enter other worlds, pick up new ways of thinking.
I have conversations with strangers who can so easily become trusted companions.
I can take these new thoughts back with me to use when time starts up again, when my eyes lift from the page.
Filling my head with other people’s ideas, I am better able to think for myself.
I know I do not have all the answers.
I cannot know it all.
I know there are always better ways of doing things.
But there is always another great book awaiting to be discovered.
Fed one by one into my subconscious, these books power the machinery of my imagination.
Conversations With Quotations 