“Personally I have to exercise a lot of agency in reading, and understanding what I read, and bearing it all in mind for long enough to make sense of the book as I go along. In no sense does it feel like a passive process by which beauty is transmitted to me without my involvement; it feels like an active effort, which an experience of beauty is the constructed result. But, I think more importantly, great novels engage my sympathies and make me desire things.”

― Beautiful World, Where Are You