…[M]ost adults don’t read anywhere near the quantity of literature they consumed in their youth. Nor do they read with the same intensity.
That is because youth is the age of Romance. Not boy-girl romance in the common meaning of the term, but rather the classical meaning of Romance: intense, passionate stories in which everything matters greatly. The hero is not just brave, he is the bravest; he does not save just himself, he saves the world. The poet is not merely somebody who happens to have a way with words; the poet sees the world through the eyes of genius and helps us understand the human condition. Everything the Romantic writer writes is bigger than life. Deeper, truer, richer, more brutal.
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