In reading, friendship is restored immediately to its original purity. With books there is no forced sociability. If we pass the evening with those f… - Marcel Proust

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In reading, friendship is restored immediately to its original purity. With books there is no forced sociability. If we pass the evening with those friends — books — it’s because we really want to. When we leave them, we do so with regret and, when we have left them, there are none of those thoughts that spoil friendship: “What did they think of us?” — “Did we make a mistake and say something tactless?” — “Did they like us?” — nor is there the anxiety of being forgotten because of displacement by someone else. All such agitating thoughts expire as we enter the pure and calm friendship of reading.