John Shore:

We read because it's awesome to climb into someone else's heart and mind, to know what they know -- to, for just a moment or two, become them.  And if the book we have read is a great one, then on some weird cellular level we are permanently altered by it; for the rest of our lives, we are a little more like the author of that great book.

"The Heart of a Moralist: Dan Savage’s 'American Savage'”