You can tirelessly keep on reading the same author, revere, admire, praise him, exalt him to the skies, know and recite each of his sentences by heart, and yet remain completely unaffected by him, as if he had never demanded anything of you and not said anything at all.

J. Agee, trans. (1989), p. 43 - Das Geheimherz der Uhr [The Secret Heart of the Clock] (1987)