And most of all, books. They were, in and of themselves, reasons to stay alive. Every book written is the product of a human mind in a particular state. Add all the books together and you get the end sum of humanity. Every time I read a great book I felt I was reading a kind of map, a treasure map, and the treasure I was being directed to was in actual fact myself.

There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself.

There is only one genre in fiction, the genre is called book.

There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I don't really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping.

Books might be one way to recover some space. Stories. Fiction. When I was eleven, friendless, struggling to fit in at school, I read The outsiders and Rumble Fish and Tex by S.E. Hinton, and I suddenly had friends again. Her books were friends.. And the stories they inhabited could be places I could hide inside. And feel safe. In a world that can get too much, a world where we are running out of mind space, fictional worlds are essential. They can be an escape from reality.

There is this idea that you either read to escape or you read to find yourself. I don't really see the difference. We find ourselves through the process of escaping... Rather than leave the mind entirely, words help us leave a mind, and give us the building blocks to build another one, similar but better, nearby to the old one but with firmer foundations, and very often a better view.

Read Emily Dickinson. Read Graham Greene. Read Italo Calvino. Read Maya Angelou. Read anything you want. Just read. Books are possibilities. They are Escape Routes. They give you options when you have none. Each one can be a home for an uprooted mind.