When someone brought me Agua viva, it gave me such a joy that I did not read it. It took me at least a year to do so. And all of a sudden, the book was divided into a thousand books. Each sentence seemed to be another book. That is how I consoled myself with the fact that it was enclosed in a single volume. When I was little, I had experienced pleasure when the third volume of The Three Musketeers was missing from the Municipal Library. When we are little, we imagine that once a book has been read, it has been read. Later on, we realize that we are never done reading a book. We can read in all tranquility, read again interminably even the smallest of volumes, like Agua viva. The text opens up. It is a book full of books. That is what a book and reading are all about. Commercially, a book full of books disgruntles readers and editors, who ask for a book consisting of one and only one book. And if it is a book consisting of one page or one word, that is even better for them!
—Helene Cixous, Reading With Clarice Lispector. (via batarde)
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