ALT “I’ll give you a program to follow every night. For the next thousand nights, before you go to bed, read one short story. That’ll take you ten minutes, fifteen minutes. Then read one poem a night from the vast history of poetry … Read the great poets, go back and read Shakespeare, read Alexander Pope, read Robert Frost. One poem a night, one short story a night, one essay a night, for the next 1,000 nights. From various fields: archaeology, zoology, biology, all the great philosophers of time … I want you to read essays in every field. Every night, before you go to bed, you’re stuffing your head with one poem, one short story, one essay—at the end of a thousand nights, you’ll be full of stuff, won’t you?”