“A poem is a frozen momentmelted by each reader for themselvesto flow into the here and now.”

“If I wrote the word flower,would it still grow like a flower?If I wrote a poem concerning a river,would the water still flow in the eyes of the reader?”

“Books are frozen voices, in the same way that musical scores are frozen music. The score is a way of transmitting the music to someone who can play it, releasing it into the air where it can once more be heard. And the black alphabet marks on the page represent words that were once spoken, if only in the writer’s head. They lie there inert until a reader comes along and transforms the letters into living sounds. The reader is the musician of the book: each reader may read the same text, just as each violinist plays the same piece, but each interpretation is different.”

“Flow is something the reader experiences, not the writer.”

“Readers have to be sought out and won to the light of the page, poem by poem, one by one by one.”

“No poem is intended for the reader, no picture for the beholder, no symphony for the listener.”