" One hundred and seventy years later, readers had to contend with Socrates's pronouncement that books are useless artifacts. Literary works cannot explain what they say, the great philosopher argued — they can only repeat the same words over and over. To me this sounds less like the definition of a book than a Heideggerian, but in any event Socrates clearly missed the point. Books don't repeat the same words over and over again. The Gulliver's Travels whose whimsy amused you at twelve is not the Gulliver's Travels whose acid engaged you at thirty. "

― James K. Morrow , The Last Witchfinder