The moment you think you understand a great work of art, it’s dead for you.

Understanding, when it hardens into a summary, replaces the thing with your account of it. After that you stop meeting the work and start rereading your own note about it. What keeps something alive is the part that will not settle, the line that still bothers you a little on the fourth visit. The same is true of people and of ideas you hold.

Go back to something you decided you had figured out, a book, a song, a person, and look for the detail your summary does not cover. Sit with that detail rather than folding it in.