I would search vainly in myself for the overloaded memories and sweet unreason of rustic childhoods. I never scratched the soil or searched for nests; I never looked for plants or threw stones at birds. But books were my birds and my nests, my pets, my stable and my countryside; the library was the world trapped in a mirror; it had its infinite breadth, its variety and its unpredictability.

--Jean -Paul Sartre, Words (p-33)