"Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened
and its deepest mystery probed? Why are we reading if not in hope that
the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and
inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness,
and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so that we may feel
again their majesty and power? What do we ever know that is higher than
that power which, from time to time, seizes our lives, and reveals us
startlingly to ourselves as creatures set down here bewildered? Why does
death so catch us by surprise, and why love? We still and always want
waking. We should amass half dressed in long lines like tribesmen and
shake gourds at each other, to wake up; instead we watch television and
miss the show."
- Annie Dillard
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