Hunger.

It is not sufficient to receive; one must welcome. One must, say the pedagogue and the dietitian in the same voice, "assimilate."  In order to do that, we are advised not to read too fast and to be careful not to swallow too large a bite. We are told to divide each difficulty into as many parts as possible, the better to solve them. Yes, chew well, drink a little at a time, savor poems line by line. All these precepts are well and good. But one precept orders them. One first needs a good desire to eat, drink and read. One must want to read a lot, read more, always read.

Thus, in the morning, before the books piled high on my table, to the god of reading, I say my prayer of the devouring reader: "Give us this day our daily hunger ..."

Gaston Bachelard,  from the introduction to The Poetics of Reverie: Childhood, Language, and the Cosmos