“It's in being read that a book becomes a book, and in each of a million different readings a book become one of a million different books…”
Source: How to Get Filthy Rich in Rising Asia
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Mohsin Hamid 17
Pakistani novelist 1971Related quotes
“A book read by a thousand different people is a thousand different books.”
Source: Sculpting in Time (1986), p. 177
“The possession of a book becomes a substitute for reading it.”
“The more books you read, the more stupid you become.”
Speech (26 June 1965), quoted in Jung Chang and Jon Halliday, Mao: The Unknown Story (2005), p. 507
1960s
'Borgias on my mind'
Essays and reviews, Glued to the Box (1983)
Source: Journey Within (1947), Ch. 2 : The Three Revelations
Context: No one ever reads a book. He reads himself through books, either to discover or to control himself. And the most objective books are the most deceptive. The greatest book is not the one whose message engraves itself on the brain, as a telegraphic message engraves itself on the ticker-tape, but the one whose vital impact opens up other viewpoints, and from writer to reader spreads the fire that is fed by the various essences, until it becomes a vast conflagration leaping from forest to forest.