“Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth.”

—  Alberto Manguel

Source: The Library at Night

Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immortality. Reading is, in this sense, a ritual of rebirth." by Alberto Manguel?
Alberto Manguel photo
Alberto Manguel 63
writer 1948

Related quotes

Maurice Barrès photo

“The reader collaborates with the author in every book, or The reader is co-author in every book.”

Maurice Barrès (1862–1923) French novelist

Tout livre a pour collaborateur son lecteur

Source: Biographical notice http://www.evene.fr/celebre/biographie/maurice-barres-499.php on Evene

Robert Maynard Hutchins photo

“There is a sense in which every great book is always over the head of the reader: he can never fully comprehend it. That is why these books are great teachers; they demand the attention of the reader and keep his intelligence on the stretch.”

Robert Maynard Hutchins (1899–1977) philosopher and university president

Great Books: The Foundation of a Liberal Education (1954)

“Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies.”

Kathy Acker (1947–1997) American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet

"On Delany the Magician", a foreword to Trouble on Triton (1996) by Samuel R. Delany, and reprinted in Acker's collection Bodies of Work (1996)
Source: Trouble on Triton: An Ambiguous Heterotopia
Context: Every book, remember, is dead until a reader activates it by reading. Every time that you read you are walking among the dead, and, if you are listening, you just might hear prophecies. Aeneas did. Odysseus did. Listen to Delany, a prophet.

Alberto Manguel photo

“Readers, censors know, are defined by the books they read.”

Alberto Manguel (1948) writer

Source: The Library at Night

Alice James photo

“What sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which every one else is reading.”

Alice James (1848–1892) American diarist

As quoted in Alice James, Her Brothers — Her Journal (1934).

Libba Bray photo

“I'd like to thank readers. Every time you open a book, it is a strike against ignorance. Unless you're reading Sarah Palin.”

Libba Bray (1964) American teen writer
Khushwant Singh photo

“Full of spirit, wit and good sense and as free of humbug as the man himself, The Freethinker’s Prayer Book by Khushwant Singh, is a book of inspiration, comfort and entertainment for every discerning reader.”

Khushwant Singh (1915–2014) Indian novelist and journalist

Quoted in The Freethinker’s Prayer Book by Khushwant Singh – Advance Book Review, 21 December 2013, Latest Book Reviews Net http://latestbookreviews.net/the-freethinkers-prayer-book-by-khushwant-singh-book-review-release-date/,

Thomas Wolfe photo

“The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.”

Thomas Wolfe (1900–1938) American writer
Octavio Paz photo

“I don't believe that there are dangerous writers: the danger of certain books is not in the books themselves but in the passions of their readers.”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Source: An Erotic Beyond: Sade

Mortimer J. Adler photo

“The great authors were great readers, and one way to understand them is to read the books they read.”

Mortimer J. Adler (1902–2001) American philosopher and educator

Source: How to Read a Book: The Classic Guide to Intelligent Reading

Related topics