Reading gives us someplace to go when we have to stay where we are.

The aphorism frames reading as a form of mental travel: even when the body is confined—by circumstance, duty, illness, poverty, or social constraint—the imagination can move freely through other lives, places, and times. It also implies a quiet resistance to limitation: books offer agency when external options are scarce. In Cooley’s characteristic compressed style, the line balances consolation and critique—suggesting that the need for reading often arises from enforced stillness, yet that stillness can be transformed into inward expansiveness. The quote’s enduring appeal lies in how it dignifies private, solitary reading as a genuine mode of experience rather than mere escape.