Deep memory is a polyphony of voices

(...) everything you read might end up in your work whether you're aware of it or not. At the same time the reader brings their own readings into the reading of a new work and might identify echoes the writer never interacted directly with. When you read an author, let's say author X, you might be reading so many other authors indirectly, and all these authors were in turn reading other authors that you as a reader might too have read. So, you, as a reader, find these echoes there that perhaps author X never intended. It's all really promiscuous and confusing; an orgy of voices making up a unique voice. Reading might be one of the most promiscuous activities as you get to be intimate with all these voices replayed in your head with your own voice.


Susana Medina (via debunking the anxiety of influence)