Read, and read a lot.  If you have a favorite author, read their works, but don’t limit yourself to their works.  If you have a favorite genre, read that genre, but don’t limit yourself to that genre.  The point of reading is to explore, to discover.  When you read, you learn, whether you realize it or not.  You learn different writing techniques, facts, different opinions, and you learn more about yourself.  When you pick up a book and open the front cover, you are willingly leaving your own world behind and allowing the book to take you into its own.  You’ll learn in that world, and someway or another, it’ll change you.  Maybe you learn something.  Maybe you learn to like a character or maybe it causes you to want to travel.  Maybe the book steals a part of you and keeps it locked away in its pages.  Maybe the book changes you, causes you to think.  To ponder.  Because what would the point of reading be if it didn’t change you?  If it didn’t make you think about it, mull over its contents and lessons?  Characters in books are always so different and ready to teach you a lesson.  Sometimes those lessons make you silent, make you think.  Maybe those lessons make you loud and ready to live.  Whatever change the book brings about, accept it.  Don’t push it away.  Let it change you.  And once you’ve been changed, open another book and let it take you away all over again.

Me: *reading a book and laughing while eating noodles*

Mom: What’s funny?

Me: This book.

Mom: Don’t choke.

Me: Don’t worry, I know how to hold things in my mouth and not swallow.

Mom:

Me:

Mom:

Me:

Mom:

Me:

Mom: What

Me: What

Mom:

Me:

Mom:

Me: *goes back to reading*