Over the last thirty-five years there has never been a moment when I, for one, was not reading one to five books at a time, and yet it has never seemed to me that I read primarily because I was lonely.  I read for the same reason that I listened to music, because it was interesting, pleasurable, and I always felt I was becoming "larger," or more fully human, because of it.  Reading is an expression not of "loneliness" but of a very different human emotion (if we must deal in primary human emotions): curiosity.  Reading is a part of our desire for experience, a desire to know the world, to internalize the world, to prepare to judge the world, and even to be able to participate in the future construction of that world.  With respect to art and intellect, it's not so much that one is afraid of dying but that one is afraid of dying empty.

Curtis White, author of
"The Middle Mind"