I now know what Mallarmé meant

by, "The world exists to end up in a book,"

and, "Destruction was my Beatrice."

He meant the same damned thing.

The Myth of the Chinese Written Character

We wanted to believe in a silent writing. We wanted to believe in a reading that evoked no sounds, only images, so that the text could never be simply read out loud. To recite any text you would first have to form its ideas in your mind. Only then would you choose the words of the spoken language to represent the thought, just as one might recount a memory, or describe a passing scene. The signs on the page could not determine the sounds in the air. Between the poem and the performance there would always be a picture. There would be no reading without imagination.

The function of art is not to get you thinking but to end your thoughtlessness. It is not to make you feel something but to assuage your callousness.

Institutions are the way we do things, immediately, without thinking.

Intuitions are the way we see things, immediately, without feeling.

Experience is what makes us think and feel, i.e., imagine.

Imagination is the means by which our intuitions and our institutions change.

Literature doesn't change you. It helps you live with who you have become.