Literary theorist Gérard Genette states, "More than
a boundary or a sealed border, the
paratext is, rather, a threshold." It is "a zone between text and off-text,
a zone not only of transition but also of transaction: a privileged place of pragmatics and a strategy, of an influence on the public, an influence that ... is at the service of a better reception for the text and a more pertinent reading of it".