I know no pleasure like that of books, and I read very little. Books are introductions to dreams, and no introductions are necessary for one who freely and naturally enters into conversation with them. I’ve never been able to lose myself in a book; as I’m reading, the commentary of my intellect or imagination has always hindered the narrative flow. After a few minutes it’s I who am writing, and what I write is nowhere to be found.

My favourite things to read are the banal books that sleep with me at my bedside. There are two that I always have close at hand: Father Figueiredo’s Rhetoric, and Father Freire’s Reflections on the Portuguese Language. I always reread these books with pleasure, and while it’s true I’ve read them over many times, it’s also true that I’ve read neither one straight through. I’m indebted to these books for a discipline I doubt I could ever have acquired on my own: to write with objectivity, with reason as one’s constant guide.

The affected, dry, monastic style of Father Figueiredo is a discipline that delights my intellect. The nearly always undisciplined verbosity of Father Freire amuses my mind without tiring it, and teaches me without stirring up any worries. Both are learned, untroubled minds that confirm my complete lack of desire to be like them, or like anyone else.

I read and abandon myself, not to my reading but to me. I read and fall asleep, and it’s as if my already dreaming eyes still followed Father Figueiredo’s descriptions of the figures of speech, and it’s in enchanted forests that I hear Father Freire explain that one should say ‘Magdalena’, because only an ignorant person says ‘Madalena’.