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Selected quotations: S
Steiner, George
He is no reader who has not heard, in his inward ear, the call of
the hundreds of thousands, of the millions of volumes which stand
in the stacks of the British Library or of Widener asking to be
read. For there is in each book a gamble against oblivion, a wager
against silence, which can be won only when the book is opened
again (but in contrast to man, the book can wait centuries for the
hazard of resurrection). Every authentic reader, in the sense of
Chardin's delineation, carries within him a nagging weight of
omission, of the shelves he has hurried past, of the books whose
spine his fingers have brushed against in blind haste
The uncommon reader
Last modified: Thu Nov 8 13:55:04 GMT 2001
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