If you come across a really "compelling" passage, one that might be capable of dissolving bits of your personality, I think what happens is not that you go, a-ha. I think what happens is that you read it, and you think, when I play this in my inner ear it sounds wonderful, but I can't quite imagine what it would be like to say it out loud. You sense that it could not have been said so beautifully by someone who had not thought about it in an extremely careful way for a long time, and that to understand it you'd have to do the same thing. Then you think: there is nothing I would rather be, than a person who understands this passage -- who, if he recited it out loud, would also be able to re-explain it in other words, because it had become a native part of of himself. It seems like if I were that person then my current problems would fade away because I would be focused on subtler, deeper ones. Then I suppose you re-read it a lot or you read other things by the same author, or you read criticism about that author, and in the end this becomes a habit, you forget why you started doing any of this, so that when you go back to that passage it seems like the most transparently true thing in the world, like drinking water.
