“The most common voluntary activity….is, by a long shot, participating in experiences that we know are not real. When we are free to do whatever we want, we retreat to the imagination—to worlds created by others, as with books, movies, video games, and television…or to worlds we ourselves create, as when daydreaming and fantasizing….This is a strange way for an animal to spend its days.”

—Paul Bloom, “The Pleasures of Imagination” (2010) (source)

Image: London bookshop after German bombing, 1940 (AP photo)