“I am reading six books at once, the only way of reading; since, as you will agree, one book is only a single unaccompanied note, and to get the full sound, one needs ten others at the same time.”
“Whenever anyone declares having read a book of mine I am disappointed by the error. That’s because my books are not to be read in the sense usually called reading: the only way it seems to me to approach the novels that I write is to catch them in the same manner that one catches an illness.”
“any book in the world - if there was only one way to read and understand it, what would be the point of reading that book?”
“If you read one book you are a clone. If you read two books you are confused. If you read ten books you have your own voice. And if you read one hundred books you are wise. (paraphrase)”
“There's nothing wrong with reading a book you love over and over. When you do, the words get inside you, become a part of you, in a way that words in a book you've read only once can't.”
“Owing to the flood of shallow books which really are exhausted in one reading, the modern mind tends to think every book is the same, finished in one reading. But it is not so. And gradually the modern mind will realize it again. The real joy of a book lies in reading it over and over again, and always finding something different, coming upon another meaning, another level of meaning. It is, as usual, a question of values: we are so overwhelmed with quantities of books, that we hardly realize any more that a book can be valuable, valuable like a jewel, or a lovely picture, into which you can look deeper and deeper and get a more profound experience very time. It is far, far better to read one book six times, at intervals, than to read six several books.”