Authors:
  • A book , once it is printed and published, becomes individual. It is by its publication as decisively severed from its author as in parturition a child is cut off from its parent. The book "means" thereafter, perforce, both grammatically and actually, whatever meaning this or that reader gets out of it.

    James Branch Cabell (1930). “The Works of James Branch Cabell: Towsend of Lichfield”