The Sprague Lab

[The writer] is careful of what she reads, for that is what she will write. She is careful of what she learns, because that is what she will know. -Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

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 hope of meaningfulness, and press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so 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 which 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. - Annie Dillard, The Writing Life