There is really no way of considering a book independently of one’s special sensations in reading it on a particular occasion. In this as in everything else one must allow a certain relativity. In a sense, one can never read the book that the author originally wrote, and one can never read the same book twice.
Edmund Wilson, Jr. (1895–1972) American writer, literary critic, journalist
The Triple Thinkers, Foreword (1948 ed.)
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