I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us.
If the book we are reading doesn't wake us up with a blow on the head,
what are we reading it for? ...we need
the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like
the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished
into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe
for the frozen sea inside us.
Franz Kafka
