An analogy on reading that has stayed with me, from How to Read a Book by Adler & Van Doren.
The relation between writer and reader is remarkably similar to the relation between pitcher and catcher in baseball. Both pitching-writing and catching-reading are active, demanding efforts. There is no such thing as passive catching, and no such thing as passive reading: the ball does not arrive in the mitt by itself, and meaning does not arrive in the mind by itself either.
The success of the whole activity is how well the two cooperate. It is no win for the pitcher-writer to throw a ball so difficult that the catcher-reader simply cannot catch it — a brilliant point that lands nowhere has been wasted. Nor is it a win to throw a ball so easy it never gets past the batter — and in reading, the batter is boredom: too gentle, and the reader’s attention swats it away.
Pitcher-writer and catcher-reader are two people at different levels of expertise, and both keep practicing to level up. But the activity cannot be optimal when the disparity is too wide — a major-league throw is useless to a beginner’s glove. Even so, a good pitcher-writer will usually throw the most challenging balls they responsibly can, trusting the reader to rise and meet them. (An analogy I first caught in a friend’s garden of thoughts.)