Readers usually grossly underestimate their own importance. If a reader cannot create a book along with the writer, the book will never come to life.

Creative involvement: that's the difference between reading a book and watching TV.
In watching TV, we are passive-sponges; we do nothing. In reading we must become creators, imagining the setting of the story, seeing the facial expressions, hearing the inflection of the voices. The author and the reader "know" each other; they meet on the bridge of words.

- Madeline L'Engle
Walking on Water, p. 34