"It’s not as though when I read I’m gathering information, or indeed can remember much of what I read. I know the books that grip me, as everybody does, but their effect is indiscernible. I don’t quite know what it is… There are powerful unconscious evocative effects in reading books that one loves. There’s something about these books that we want to go on thinking about, that matters to us. They’re not just fetishes that we use to fill gaps. They are like recurring dreams we can’t help thinking about."
~Adam Phillips
(a British psychotherapist and essayist. Since 2003 he has been the general editor of the new Penguin Modern Classics translations of Sigmund Freud. He is also a regular contributor to the London Review of Books.
Mr. Phillips words are so helpful to me. It's not so much the conscious, but the unconscious effect, that a book has. I guess I would call it the "Wow" factor!
ReplyDeleteOh -- great descriptor! It is indeed the "Wow Factor"!!!!
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