“This book is past the first flush of youth. It is a book that is in puberty. It is hesitating, and from the vantage point of the mature reader, it is both a sad and amusing reminder of the part which is not always attractive enough to be revisited.”
From the seventh book, "The Book of Youth"
The Pillow Book
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Peter Greenaway 266
British film director 1942Related quotes
alt.fan.pratchett (1 December 1998) http://www.lspace.org/fandom/afp/timelines/discussions/is-pterry-going-downhill.html
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Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)
“My brother was always glued to his books, an ardent reader and an educationist.”
Surjit Singh, his younger brother, as quoted in "Singh brothers see bright future for economy" http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2004-05-20/news/27389027_1_manmohan-singh-surjit-singh-big-brother, The Economic Times (20 May 2004)
“The reader collaborates with the author in every book, or The reader is co-author in every book.”
Tout livre a pour collaborateur son lecteur
Source: Biographical notice http://www.evene.fr/celebre/biographie/maurice-barres-499.php on Evene
'Borgias on my mind'
Essays and reviews, Glued to the Box (1983)
“That book is good in vain, which the reader throws away.”
The Life of Dryden
Lives of the English Poets (1779–81)
Context: It is not by comparing line with line, that the merit of great works is to be estimated, but by their general effects and ultimate result. It is easy to note a weak line, and write one more vigorous in its place; to find a happiness of expression in the original, and transplant it by force into the version: but what is given to the parts may be subducted from the whole, and the reader may be weary, though the critick may commend. Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good in vain, which the reader throws away. He only is the master, who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day.
"A Note on Cabellian Harmonics" in Cabellian Harmonics (April 1928)
Context: A book, once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book "means" thereafter, perforce, — both grammatically and actually, — whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it.
