Why we read

"Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? What do we ever know that is higher than the power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does death still catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want waking."  - Annie Dillard

Photograph by Alan Lee.