One can transform a place by reading in it. - Alberto Manguel

I had done this all by myself. No one had performed the magic for me. I and the shapes were alone together, revealing themselves in a silently respectful dialogue. Since I could bare lines into living reality, I was all powerful. I could read.

A society can exist - many do exist - without writing, but no society can exist without reading.

Most readers, then and now, have at some time experienced the humiliation of being told that their occupation is reprehensible.