As for you, the writer, never forget the following: the reader is like a circus horse which has to be taught that it will be rewarded with a lump of sugar every time it acquits itself well. If that sugar is withheld, it will not perform. As for essayists and critics, they are like cuckolded husbands: always the last to find out…

From Milorad Pavić’s Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel, Female Edition, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988 (first published in 1984), p. 15, quoting from Joannes Daubmannus’ Lexicon Cosri, 1691, no page.

Addendum I (June 14, 2000)

So many years have passed since I read Pavić’s book that I am not sure whether or not I changed the places of reader and writer in this quote, as I am wont to do. My copy of the book has long gone missing, but Lauren’s copy may still be around. However, chances are I will not be looking for it to check the quote. In the last analysis, the reader and writer are interchangeable, as witnessed by my uncertainty concerning this quote.

Addendum II (May 11, 2016)

The plot thickens. In my “Postscriptum III” (December 27, 1989), I quote Pavić’s masterpiece one more time, but this time around it is the male edition that the quote hails from. The reader and writer are in reversed places when compared with the female edition, from which this quote was plucked. Was this Pavić’s clever invention, or have I concocted it myself, as I was wont to do at the time? Indeed, I used to doctor many an innocent quote back then. Chances are that I will never learn, though. Both editions of the book are out of my reach at present. Besides, the mystery pleases me all by itself. Why ever resolve it?