Sometimes One Who Thinks Himself Incomplete Is

For Those Who Pass It Without Entering, The City Is One Thing; It Is Another For Those Who Are Trapped By It And Never Leave. There Is The City Where You Arrive For The First Time; And There Is Another City Which You Leave Never To Return. Each Deserves A Different Name; Perhaps I Have Already Spoken Of Irene Under Other Names; Perhaps I Have Spoken Only Of Irene.

In An Age When Other Fantastically Speedy, Widespread Media Are Triumphing, And Running The Risk Of Flattening All Communication Onto A Single, Homogenous Surface, The Function Of Literature Is Communication Between Things That Are Different Simply Because They Are Different, Not Blunting But Even Sharpening The Differences Between Them, Following The True Bent Of Written Language.

The Unconscious Is The Ocean Of The Unsayable, Of What Has Been Expelled From The Land Of Language, Removed As A Result Of Ancient Prohibitions.

Reading Is Going Toward Something That Is About To Be, And No One Yet Knows What It Will Be.

Your House, Being The Place In Which You Read, Can Tell Us The Position Books Occupy In Your Life, If They Are A Defense You Set Up To Keep The Outside World At A Distance, If They Area Dream Into Which You Sink As If Into A Drug, Or Bridges You Cast Toward The Outside, Toward The World That Interests You So Much That You Want To Multiply And Extend Its Dimensions Through Books.