What happens with great literature is that the shadows on the pages move around

From David Gilmour on Building Strong Stomachs by Emily M. Keeler.

I teach only the best. What happens with great literature is that the shadows on the pages move around. So you read it when you’re 46, and you read it when you’re—I’m 63 now, and it’s moved. Great literature organically moves, and it never stays still. You don’t get tired of it, you just notice different things about it. What is intolerable is second- and third-rate literature, because it gives up all its secrets the first time. And the second time you read it, it’s all there; there’s nothing new. It’s like an Andy Warhol painting—you look at an Andy Warhol painting once, you can look at it a hundred times and there’s nothing new in it. But I’ve read War and Peace four times, and I’m still breathtaken with how much good I hadn’t noticed the other three times.