"If you're not reading literature that requires a dictionary, you're wading in the shallows. 

The times demand both significant engagement and escape. 

If one is going to attempt to ascend intellectual heights or engage the ills of the day, one must prepare for the type of atmosphere that can kill a lower regions breather. Its thin air the higher you go and it takes time to move up in one's pursuit of truth, light and meaningful understanding. Scramble too fast or beyond your capacity to process the content and you can get some mind nuttiness. 

To me a personal library should reflect feet rooted in the realities of the moment and wings that leave the ground for perspective. 

I find that I need the seers, the bards and the magicians to maintain an intellectual equilibrium. If I get around people who are only microscope & scalpel for too long, I find myself eviscerated on the deep levels of my soul. 

I find myself desperately in need of the poets the older I get in the intellectual life. Thinking is supposed to be a process of meaningful mastication and the art of poetry helps me digest more properly. 

In order for me to bring out words worth saying, I inhale stories, lines, songs, images, echoes from the past and voices in the present. 

I find that my mind is a tidal like reality, I place myself in the great inflow of waves and waves of content. It's often loud and disorienting as I brace myself to receive. 

But I also need the sand sucking outflow of silence and letting the unattached excess be pulled back into the abyss of my incomprehension. The healthy undertow for me can be many things...movies, tv, games, food, walks, nature, anything that pulls me away from the serious shores." Eric Blauer.