“The sole/soul purpose of a book is to be read.”

“Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul.”

“In a school community, someone who reads a book for some secretive purpose, other than discussing it, is strange. What was she reading for?”

“The reading of a fine book is an uninterrupted dialogue in which the book speaks and our soul replies.”

“Every book has a soul, the soul of the person who wrote it and the soul of those who read it and dream about it.”

“At the start, we tried to be calm and objective, but that soon fell away, and the purpose of the speakers was to goad the listeners into wanting to read the book themselves. Once two members had read the same book, they could argue, which was our great delight. We read books, talked books, argued over books, and became dearer and dearer to one another.”