I was so enthused with literature -- not stuck on literature, but in love with letters -- that I was easily inclined to bring all the conversations round to works I had read or fictitious characters from my readings about whom I loved to talk

Yet I had become very attached to George Roc. I liked him, not for the joy of playing with him, not for some talent that made him stand out from the rest, not even for his kindness: above all, I liked him because he was always sad and because the things he told me caused me a degree of pain.....George Roc was the first being that I'd met who saw and felt himself unhappy.

On evenings, I spent the entire study period reading....From that time on, the world began to broaden around me, beyond any tangible limits. The world, as portrayed in those works destined for young people, was divided in two: an ordinary, everyday world, brutal and unresponding to desires, and a spacious, logical world, about all kind, interesting and desirable. Wasn't the very act of reading a pleasure more substantial than that of playing or eating, for instance, even when one was starved?