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Of all the diversions of life, there is none so proper to fill up its empty spaces as the reading of useful and entertaining authors.
--
No. 94 (18 June 1711).

 

Joseph Addison

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The kind of deep reading that a sequence of printed pages promotes is valuable not just for the knowledge we acquire from the author's words but for the intellectual vibrations those words set off within our own minds. In the quiet spaces opened up by the sustained, undistracted reading of a book, or by any other act of contemplation, for that matter, we make our own associations, draw our own inferences and analogies, foster our own ideas…. If we lose those quiet spaces, or fill them up with 'content,' we will sacrifice something important not only in our selves but in our culture.

 

Nicholas G. Carr

 

There's a vacancy, won't you come to me
And fill my empty spaces
I'm a motel man in a promised land
That's filled with empty faces
So won't you bring your sorrows bring your dreams,
It's a place for you to be
There's no more tomorrow or that's how it seems
Won't you come to me? I've got a vacancy

 

Harry Chapin

 

I have a simple philosophy. Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. And scratch where it itches.

 

Alice Roosevelt Longworth

 

When I consider the short duration of my life, swallowed up in the eternity before and after, the little space which I fill, and even can see, engulfed in the infinite immensity of spaces of which I am ignorant, and which know me not, I am frightened, and am astonished at being here rather than there; for there is no reason why here rather than there, why now rather than then. Who has put me here? By whose order and direction have this place and time been allotted to me? 205

 

Blaise Pascal

 

I pondered exactly how future biographers would go about writing the biographies of authors without letters. It's not like email and "chat" and whatnot will fill the void. Online journals help a little, but they are not, generally, the truly honest sorts of things that letters were, and only a few authors keep them. I tried for years to keep up letter writing, but was defeated in the end by too many unreliable correspondents.

 

Caitlin R. Kiernan