“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.”
"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.
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Kathy Acker 38
American novelist, playwright, essayist, and poet 1947–1997Related quotes
“For every book you buy, you should buy the time to read it.”
“Listen you have to read a book three times before you know it.”
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"Common Places," No. 13, The Literary Examiner (September - December 1823)
“After signing it, he added the postscript: By the time you read this, you will already be dead.”
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Essay, "Listening". p.59
Writing Down the Bones (1986)
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