About Reading

[Constantin]

"Reading is a conversation. Lunatics engage in imaginary dialogues which they hear echoing somewhere in their minds; readers engage in a similar dialogue provoked silently by words on a page. Usually the reader’s response is not recorded, but often a reader will feel the need to take up a pencil and answer back on the margins of a text. This comment, this gloss, this shadow that sometimes accompanies our favourite books extends and transports the text into another time and another experience; it lends reality to the illusion that a book speaks to us and wills us (its readers) into being."

From "A Reading Diary" by Alberto Manguel