What an astonishing thing
a book is.
It’s a flat object
made from a tree
with flexible parts
on which are imprinted
lots of funny dark squiggles.
But one glance at it
and you’re inside the mind
of another person,
maybe somebody dead
for thousands of years.
Across the millennia,
an author is speaking
clearly and silently
inside your head,
directly to you.
Writing is perhaps
the greatest
of human inventions,
binding together people
who never knew each other,
citizens of distant epochs.
Books break
the shackles of time.
A book is proof
that humans are capable
of working magic.
— Carl Sagan
Whaddaya Say?