A person can escape an ingrained pattern of mental incapacity or ‘non compos mentis’ (“no power of the mind”) by reading, writing, thinking, and studying their environment for telling external determinates that will shape a journey of the mind, body, and soul.

Reading and writing are solitary activities that increase a person’s capacity for concentration, awareness, and conceptual thought as the person weaves immediate information with stored memories.

A person who does not read and never seeks to increase personal knowledge will always remain imprisoned by ignorance and unable to escape a cellblock of drudgery and despair.

People who learn primarily from reading and principally communicate through writing generally possess a highly developed internal world, a more refined sense of self-control, and a greater sensitivity to honoring social boundaries.

Books connect us with our ancestors’ struggles, and allow us to tap into the wisdom that they extracted from nature and human relationships. Book reading allows us direct access to the great minds and the best teachers of the ages.

A person can learn beneficial information from books, but they can only acquire wisdom from living a fully engaged life.

I am no longer content to live in the prison of the self and have begun reading and writing in order to experience a larger version of reality by seeing the world through the eyes of a thousand people.

We are the walking and thinking embodiment of the books that we read.

Literature provides a person with a conceptual framework for recognizing human beings recurrent challenges in life. Reading good literature deepens a person’s understanding of the variable ways that somebody might respond to circumstances in their world, thereby adding to their own potential intellectual and spiritual depth and expands their understanding of the nuances of their own personal behavior.