“You see?” the book said. “We are all strange and wonderful. And whenever you doubt it, just open a book. You will become somebody else – and that somebody else will be a part of you forevermore.*
(Terry Teachout)

I believe that the first step towards becoming a writer is becoming a reader, but the next step is becoming a reader with a pencil.**
(Austin Kleon)

When we read, we enter into the unimaginable.

Before, we could not see the possibility, believing the path we are on to be the only one … or some better, shinier version of it.

But, when we read, our eyes are opened to so many more paths calling out to us.

Sometimes reading will start us itching when we had felt nothing, even numb, before; other times we’ll bring an itch to the pages and discover a scratch.

I read so that I might not only know more but might become more.

I had no idea when I started to read this morning: scriptures, books and blogs just what would happen, but I found myself animated and smiling at the thoughts colliding and bringing into view possible contributions I might bring to others.

This includes Austin Kleon’s blog about marginalia – the practice of writing in the margins of books – increasing one’s interaction with the text – and adding illustrations, please.

I picked up my pencil and started straightaway. This may slow reading down, but then, I don’t want to get through books but for books to get through me.

If we read it will come because something happens to us whilst reading so that now we must do something.

(*From Terry Teachout’s letter to young readers, in Maria Popova and Claudia Bedrick’s A Velocity of Being.)
(**From Austin Kleon’s blog: Reading with a pencil.)