The art of reading is in many ways opposed to the art of writing. Read- ing is a craft that enriches the text conceived by the author, deepening it and rendering it more complex, concentrating it to reflect the reader’s personal experience and expanding it to reach the farthest confines of the reader’s uni- verse and beyond. Writing, instead, is the art of resignation. The writer must accept the fact that the final text will be but a blurred reflection of the work conceived in the mind, less enlightening, less subtle, less poignant, less pre- cise. The imagination of a writer is all-powerful, and capable of dreaming up the most extraordinary creations in all their wishful perfection. Then comes the descent into language, and in the passage from thought to expres- sion much—very much—is lost. To this rule there are hardly any exceptions. To write a book is to resign oneself to failure, however honorable that failure might be.
Alberto Manguel 'Curiosity'