“I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometrical progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read before.”

“Every reader has found charms by which to secure possession of a page that, by magic, becomes as if never read before, fresh and immaculate.”

“Alexandria and its scholars […] never mistook the true nature of the past; they knew it to be the source of an ever-shifting present in which new readers engaged with old books which became new in the reading process. Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.”

“Paolo and Francesca were not ideal readers since they confess to Dante that after the first kiss they read no more. Ideal readers would have kissed and then read on.”

“Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.”

“The readers who commited suicide after reading 'Werther' were not ideal but merely sentimental readers.”

“... to lend a book is an incitement to theft."A Reader on Reading p. 281”