Readers talk differently because they’ve borrowed a thousand other people’s ways of saying things.

Reading is quietly borrowing. Every book hands you sentence shapes, ways of turning an argument, words for things you had only felt in a blur, and none of it feels like studying while it happens. Months later it shows up in how you explain something to a friend. That is why heavy readers often sound more precise without trying to.

Read something this week that is not assigned, even twenty pages before bed. When a line makes you stop, copy it down somewhere you will see it again.