"What then is the good of--what is even the defence for--occupying our hearts with stories of what never happened and entering vicariously into feelings which we should try to avoid having in our own person? The nearest I have yet got to an answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being. We want to be more than ourselves... We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own... In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself. Like the night sky in the Greek poem, I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see. Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself, and am never more than myself when I do."
~C.S. Lewis from the Epilogue to An Experiment in Criticism
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