E.B. White on the Future of Reading

Reading is the work of the alert mind, is demanding, and under ideal conditions produces finally a sort of ecstasy. As in the sexual experience, there are never more than two persons present in the act of reading--the writer, who is the impregnator, and the reader, who is the respondent. This gives the experience of reading a sublimity and power unequalled in anny other form of communication.

E. B. White, The Future of Reading. New Yorker column collected in The Second Tree from the Corner (1954).