Ezra Pound on cheap good books

Books have an immaterial as well as a material component, and because of this immaterial component they should circulate free from needless impediment, and should not be hindered in their migrations, even for the sake of material gain….The country, any country, wants all the books it can get. Only cheap good books can compete with cheap bad books. It would even be a blessing if all the second-hand book shops in Charing Cross Road could be dumped in an American city, any American city.

—Ezra Pound, in 1918