"Reading in pursuit of influence—that, I think, is the desired thing. It takes a strange mixture of humility and confidence to do as much. Suppose one reads anxious about not being influenced. To do so is to admit that one is imperfect, searching, unfinished ...
"... What Narcissus wanted was completion, wholeness; he wanted to be that image in the water and have done with it. There would be no more time, no more change, no more revision. To be willing to be influenced, even up to the last, is tantamount to declaring that we'll never be perfect, never see as gods see—even that we don't know who and what we
"The desire to be influenced is always bound up with some measure of self-dislike, or at least with a dose of discontent. While the culture tells us to love ourselves as we are—or as we will be after we've acquired the proper products and services—the true common reader does not find himself adequate at all. He looks in the mirror of his own consciousness, and he is anything but pleased ... where is this common reader ... who is both confident and humble, both ready to change and skeptical of all easy remedies?"
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