Books are good enough in their own way, but they are a mighty bloodless substitute for life. It seems a pity to sit, like the Lady of Shalott, peering into a mirror, with your back turned on all the bustle and glamour of reality.

Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894) Scottish essayist, novelist, poet

Essay (1877-07), “An Apology for Idlers,” Cornhill Magazine, Vol. 36
    (Source)

Collected in Virginibus Puerisque and Other Papers, ch. 3 (1881).