“Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent, but not a few read from habit, & I suppose that is neither innocent nor praiseworthy. Of that lamentable company am I…Of course to read in this way is as reprehensible as doping, & I never cease to wonder at the impertinence of great readers who, because they are such, look down on the illiterate…Let us admit that reading with us is just a drug that we cannot do without – who of this band does not know the restlessness that attacks him when he has been severed from reading too long, the apprehension & irritability, & the sigh of relief which the sight of a printed page extracts from him?”
Somerset Maugham (The book-bag)
