The association of books with their readers is unlike any other between objects and their users. - Alberto Manguel

We read to understand, or to begin to understand. We cannot do but to read. Reading almost as much as breathing, is our essential function.

The listeners who buy books after a reading multiply that reading; the author who realizes that he or she may be writing on a blank page but is at least not speaking to a blank wall may be encouraged by the experience, and write more.

reading is at the beginning of the social contract