I read and I am set free. I gain objectivity. I have ceased to be my usual disparate self. And what I read, rather than being a near-invisible suit that sometimes weighs on me, becomes instead the great clarity of the outside world, in which everything is worthy of note, the sun that everyone can see, the moon that weaves a web of shadows on the still earth, the vast spaces that open out into the sea, the dark solidity of the trees waving aloft their green branches, the solid peace of ponds in gardens, the paths thick with vines on the terraced slopes of the hills.

I read like someone abdicating from life. And since the crown and the royal mantle never look as grand as when the departing King deposits them on the ground, I set down on the mosaic floor of the antechambers all my past triumphs of tedium and dreams, and ascend the steps wearing only the nobility of seeing.

I read like someone who just happens to be passing. And it is in the classics, with those who are calm of mind and who, if they suffer, do not speak of it, that I feel myself to be a sacred passerby, an anointed pilgrim, a purposeless observer of a purposeless world, a Prince of the Great Exile, who, as he left, made of his desolation a final gift of alms to the last beggar. (The Book of Disquiet)