Reading, Peter Carey and Inspiration

Reading is fantastic:
a) for expanding the mind
b) for escape
c) for seeing yourself and the world in a different light
d) for procrastination (especially when you're writing a book)
e) for inspiration (especially when you're writing a book)
f) for overcoming boredom
g) for passing time away

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Here's a passage from Oscar and Lucinda, a book that won the Booker Prize by Peter Carey that I'm reading right now:

"It had not taken him long to discover that the women were by far the most interesting of the two sexes in the colony, although you would never imagine it the case if you met them with their menfolk present. For then they affected the most remarkable vapidity. But alone, or with their own sex, they revealed themselves as scientists when it came to the vectors of the human heart."

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I cried like a girl yesterday reading Peter Carey's article from the New York Magazine. Reminded me of the feelings I have whenever I read that part in the poem DO NOT GO GENTLY INTO THAT GOODNIGHT. http://nymag.com/arts/books/features/2007/32394/