She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.

The line likens reading to breathing—an involuntary, sustaining act rather than a pastime. It suggests a person for whom books are not ornamental culture but a basic condition of vitality: reading “fills” the self the way air fills lungs, enabling inner life, imagination, and endurance. The phrasing also implies urgency and necessity: to stop reading would be to suffocate spiritually or intellectually. In Dillard’s work, such imagery often elevates attention and perception into matters of survival, implying that literature can be a primary means by which a person becomes fully alive and inhabits the world with depth.