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The thirty-two chapters of a novel--if we consider how to read a novel
first--are an attempt to make something as formed and controlled as a building: but
words are more impalpable than bricks; reading is a longer and more complicated
process than seeing. Perhaps the quickest way to understand the elements of what a
novelist is doing is not to read, but to write; to make your own experiment with the
dangers and difficulties of words. Recall, then, some event that has left a distinct
impression on you--how at the corner of the street, perhaps, you passed two people
talking. A tree shook; an electric light danced; the tone of the talk was comic, but
also tragic; a whole vision, an entire conception, seemed contained in that moment.
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks03/0301251h.html#e26

Virginia Woolf, "The Common Reader, Second Series" (1935) の中の
"How Should One Read a Book" という essay からの抜粋