And what if you could live off the words that you read, the words that you wrote, so that when you sleepily shuffle to the kitchen in the morning and muscle memory propels your right arm towards the coffee filter and your left arm towards the ceramic container you purchased during that impromptu drive to Mexico, instead of scooping out Starbucks Fair Trade Certified Italian Roast, your spoon overflows with Hemingway and Tolstoy, and when you reach into the refrigerator to grab a grapefruit, you find the essay you wrote in seventh grade that won you $500 from the American Legion and a handful of PizzaHut coupons. And all of these words that have inspired you and excited you and angered you and loved you become part of you. All of these words that have consumed you emotionally now fulfill you physically. And you can eat the adjectives and rinse them down with verbs and chew them into letters that become fuel for new characters, new stories, new ways to explore that which makes you you. And you long to read and you long to write because without new words, you will starve. Without new words you will stop being you.
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