“Curiously enough, one cannot read a book: one can only reread it. A good reader, a major reader, an active and creative reader is a rereader ("Good Readers and Good Writers", p. 3).”
Source: Lectures on Literature (1980)
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Vladimir Nabokov 193
Russian-American novelist, lepidopterist, professor 1899–1977Related quotes
“If you would be a good reader, read; if a writer, write.”
Book II, ch. 18.
Discourses
"From a Chain letter to George R. R. Martin and Greg Benford", 10 July 1982; as published in Castle of Days (1992)
Nonfiction
As quoted in The New York Times (2 July 1978)
“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 writer only begins a book. A reader finishes it.”
Source: Works of Samuel Johnson
Source: On Writing Well (Fifth Edition, orig. pub. 1976), Chapter 1, The Transaction, p. 6.
