We Read Many Books, Because We Cannot

They Don't Understand What It Is To Be Awake, / To Be Living On Several Planes At Once / Though One Cannot Speak With Several Voices At Once.

The Majority Of Mankind Is Lazyminded, Incurious, Absorbed In Vanities, And Tepid In Emotion, And Is Therefore Incapable Of Either Much Doubt Or Much Faith.

Each Way Means Loneliness -- And Communion.

We Ask Only To Be Reassured About The Noises In The Cellar And The Window That Should Not Have Been Open

Most Contemporary Novels Are Not Really "written." They Obtain What Reality They Have Largely From An Accurate Rendering Of The Noises That Human Beings Currently Make In Their Daily Simple Needs Of Communication; And What Part Of A Novel Is Not Composed Of These Noises Consists Of A Prose Which Is No More Alive Than That Of A Competent Newspaper Writer Or Government Official. A Prose That Is Altogether Alive Demands Something Of The Reader That The Ordinary Novel-reader Is Not Prepared To Give.