“A book burrows into your life in a very profound way because the experience of reading is not passive.”
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Erica Jong 95
Novelist, poet, memoirist, critic 1942Related quotes
Source: The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor
Source: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History of Our Times
http://zenhabits.net/read/ How to Read More: A Lover’s Guide (3 October 2011)
Zen Habits (2007–present)
“If you only ever read one book in your life… I highly recommend you keep your mouth shut.”
Attention Scum! (2001), How To Live (2005)
The Myth of Sisyphus (1942), Absurd Creation
Context: A profound thought is in a constant state of becoming; it adopts the experience of a life and assumes its shape. Likewise, a man's sole creation is strengthened in its successive and multiple aspects: his works. One after another they complement one another, correct or overtake one another, contradict one another, too. If something brings creation to an end, it is not the victorious and illusory cry of the blinded artist: "I have said everything," but the death of the creator which closes his experiences and the book of his genius.
That effort, that superhuman consciousness are not necessarily apparent to the reader. There is no mystery in human creation. Will performs this miracle. But at least there is no true creation without a secret. To be true, a succession of works can be but a series of approximations of the same thought. But it is possible to conceive of another type of creator proceeding by juxtaposition. Their words may seem to be devoid of inter-relations, to a certain degree, they are contradictory. But viewed all together, they resume their natural grouping.
Go Rin No Sho (1645), The Water Book