““Learning to read gave us a true oasis, salvation, in the same way that coming to know Jesus or the Buddha might eventually get some of us out of the fray, but it also isolated us. Reading helped us get blissfully lost in resonant worlds where we could rest or gape or laugh with recognition, but then we looked up again, at the dinner table, or the blacktop, or church, and we couldn’t close the covers of those spooky books.””
