why we as readers exist

"[The Library of] Alexandria and its scholars, by contrast, never mistook the true nature of the past, they knew it to be the source of an ever-shifting present in which new readers engaged with old books which became new in the reading process.  Every reader exists to ensure for a certain book a modest immorality.  Reading is, in this sense a ritual of rebirth."  (The Library at Night, Alberto Manguel, p. 28)