“Why does one read books?  To instruct oneself, amuse oneself, train one’s mind…certainly all this and much more.  Ultimately it is to understand life with its thousand faces and to learn to live life…Books give us the experiences and thoughts of innumerable others, often the wisest of their generation, and lift us out of our narrow ruts.”

Jawaharlal Nehru (imprisoned by the British for his role in India’s independence movement and later the country’s prime minister) in ‘Prison Diary’, 1935