Let us change all we can. My ideal is continual change--change of life, change of home, of food, and even of skin.
Among the things that I missed most as a student, was a small library. If I had had one, I believe I should have dipped more deeply into books and into life as well; but it was not given me. During the period which is most fruitful for the maturing of the mind, that is, during the years from twelve to twenty, I lived by turns in six or seven cities, and as it was impossible to travel about with books, I never retained any.
A lack of books was the occasion of my failure to form the habit of re-reading, of tasting again and again and of relishing what I read, and also of making notes in the margin.
Nearly all authors who own a small library, in which the books are properly arranged, and nicely annotated, become famous.
I am not sentimentalizing about stolid, brazen note-taking, such as that with which the gentlemen of the Ateneo debase their books, because that merely indicates barbarous lack of culture and an obtuseness which is Kabyline.
Having had no library in my youth, I have never possessed the old favourites that everybody carries in his pocket into the country, and reads over and over until he knows them by heart.
I have looked in and out of books as travellers do in and out of inns, not stopping long in any of them. I am very sorry but it is too late now for the loss to be repaired.
Viewed from without, I seem to impress some as a crass, crabbed person, who has very little ability, while others regard me as an unhealthy, decadent writer. Then Azorín has said of me that I am a literary aristocrat, a fine and comprehensive mind.
I should accept Azorín's opinion very gladly, but personality needs to be hammered severely in literature before it leaves its slag. Like metal which is removed from the furnace after casting and placed under the hammer, I would offer my works to be put to the test, to be beaten by all hammers.
If anything were left, I should treasure it then lovingly; if nothing were left, we should still pick up some fragments of life.
I always listen to the opinions of the non-literary concerning my books with the greatest interest. My cousin, Justo Goñi, used to express his opinion without circumlocution. He always carried off my books as they appeared, and then, a long time after, would give his opinion.