I quickly learned that reading is cumulative and proceeds by geometric progression: each new reading builds upon whatever the reader has read before. - Alberto Manguel

It is in the translation that the innocence lost after the first reading is restored under another guise, since the reader is once again faced with a new text and its attendant mystery. That is the inescapable paradox of translation, and also its wealth.

Something about the possession of a book - an object that can contain infinite fables, words of wisdom, chronicles of times gone by, humorous anecdotes and divine revelation - endows the reader with the power of creating a story, and the listener with a sense of being present at the moment of creation.

I know that something dies when i give up my books, and that my memory keeps going back to them with mournful nostalgia.