10 Signs You Are Addicted to Reading

1.You must read everywhere, if there is nothing to read, you'll read the labels on shampoo bottles or old, decrepit newspapers.

2. You bring a book with you everywhere you go. I.e: field trips, parties, restaurants...

3. You've gotten in trouble for reading excessively.

4.You could live at chapters.

5.You hate it when people say: "Oh, I don't read actually." How is that possible?

6. You ALWAYS like the book better than the movie.

7. Your dream job is working at chapters or at your local library.

8. You honestly wouldn't mind not having any friends and just spending the day reading. Also during lunch break at school/work you totally wouldn't mind sitting alone with a book.

9.Everything you know, you've learned from reading books.

10. Three quotes that say it all:
"I cannot live without books." Thomas Jefferson
"I have never known any distress that an hour's reading did not relieve." ~Charles De Secondat
"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library." ~Jorge Luis Borges

On Fantasy, by George R.R. Martin

"On Fantasy"

by George R. R. Martin

The best fantasy is written in the language of dreams. It is alive as dreams are alive, more real than real ... for a moment at least ... that long magic moment before we wake.

Fantasy is silver and scarlet, indigo and azure, obsidian veined with gold and lapis lazuli. Reality is plywood and plastic, done up in mud brown and olive drab. Fantasy tastes of habaneros and honey, cinnamon and cloves, rare red meat and wines as sweet as summer. Reality is beans and tofu, and ashes at the end. Reality is the strip malls of Burbank, the smokestacks of Cleveland, a parking garage in Newark. Fantasy is the towers of Minas Tirith, the ancient stones of Gormenghast, the halls of Camelot. Fantasy flies on the wings of Icarus, reality on Southwest Airlines. Why do our dreams become so much smaller when they finally come true?

We read fantasy to find the colors again, I think. To taste strong spices and hear the songs the sirens sang. There is something old and true in fantasy that speaks to something deep within us, to the child who dreamt that one day he would hunt the forests of the night, and feast beneath the hollow hills, and find a love to last forever somewhere south of Oz and north of Shangri-La.

They can keep their heaven. When I die, I'd sooner go to Middle Earth.